the artist googles “how to be an artist”
In which I learn what I already knew: Being a writer and artist means practicing. It also helps to play — and celebrate small wins along the way!
Category: I was just thinking
Musings. Often random. Sometimes brief. More than likely not.
poetry tiktok: writing community, lit mags, presses, tips and more
I started publishing on TikTok to create and support literary community and have a little fun along the way. In that same spirit, I want to share some intel with you — what I’ve found there (so far) in terms of poetry community and how I personally use the platform.
on vulnerability & parenting
These kids have ripped me open in the most painful, fascinating, delightful way, and it’s given me a strength I didn’t know I had: learning to be OK with what’s raw and unfinished and uncertain — both as it makes an appearance in my mirror and as my boys experience it for themselves.
“luckily for margaret”
I just finished re-reading* Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret in the context of a manuscript I’m working on in which the speaker confides in and seeks guidance from an alter ego named Gertie. I’m not 100% convinced I can pull it off, but I’m following it where it goes and using my writing journals to get me there.
the annoying chewing sounds my brain makes
Except for Arielle Greenberg’s I Live in the Country & Other Dirty Poems (which I LOVED and hope to write about at some point), the “reading books cover-to-cover” list hasn’t included poetry. Here are the fiction and CNF books that have been on my mid-pandemic reading list.
“no word in her language”
How does Zucker convey such emotion while deploying such sparse, well, emotion? In portraying the flatness of love (habitual) and life (deflated), how does she gut us like she does?
where the sun don’t shine
Look on the bright side, I still have my sense of humor. The bad news for the sun-will-come-out-tomorrow crowd is that it’s a dry, mostly dark and humorless humor; I’m a Yankee through and through.