Category: Writing
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Tiny Stories Teaching Big Lessons
For me, tiny stories begin with a stray thought. Something I saw on the news. A fear I have. A memory of someone I loved or love still. A friend’s habit. A person I saw out in the world. A photograph. Anything might trigger a tiny story. They are fiction, though they inevitably start in…
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A Shooting
As I’m waiting to go up to the choir stands, a girl from the middle school asks me how I ended up in a wheelchair. There’s no malice in her question, no insult. She’s just curious. There’s a small ramp put in just for me, just for this occasion on the school football field. The…
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New Year: 2025
Welcome to 2025 everyone! We have arrived at one of my favorite times of year: a moment to take stock, evaluate, and plan ahead. I love this moment—which also comes around birthday times—because it helps me get my bearings. I get a chance to peruse my internal map, attempt to gauge the distance between where…
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Am I a Dictator?
(Not that kind of dictator.) My writing goals are insane this year. I want to write six new books in a new series as part of a rapid-release independent publishing project to launch next year. In researching the best ways to attempt this, I heard that the fastest writers dictate their books. So I figured…what…
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Scared Kid Writes Horror
The dark hides me. It’s safer here, hidden. My mother tells me this story later: she heard crying, a child, outside. She thought “That sounds like Jenny.” She goes outside and finds two-year-old me, outside, in the middle of the night, when I’m supposed to be in bed. This is the first recorded time of…
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The 5 Books on My Desk
I don’t know about you guys, but sometimes…writing is hard. Today I struggled. And I did not accomplish much. (The kitchen is clean. There’s that. It counts.) To help combat the doldrums I keep five writing books within reach of my desk. I thought that if anyone else was struggling — especially in the middle…
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Playlists
At the keyboard, waiting for words to come, I often flip over to Spotify, looking for new playlists. Always hunting for some melody, some tangible experience I haven’t heard before. Triggering some thought I haven’t thought before. I ask friends on Facebook for songs and create new playlists. I browse playlists already created in genres…
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Write Expecting to be Read: Mary Shelley’s Journals
When I was younger – maybe eleven or twelve – my mother told me never to write down anything I didn’t want someone else to read. If I kept a diary or a journal, I needed to make sure I meant what I said. And I should never write down anything I would not say…