*And by Spotify I mean reading and writing.**And by wrapped I mean last year’s and a whole life of stats. Reading stats: Writing stats: Submission stats: Thanks for letting Spotify wrap your life! Happy 2025!
Category: Writing
Story about a story
Ananda Lima writes about writing in her book Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil. One chapter is a compilation of her fellow writers’ feedback on one of her stories–without including the story in question. So meta. (I like this book a lot. It’s like Carmen Maria Machado meets Pond. Read it this month.) Anyway […]
To the FedEx print and ship
I took my manuscript to a FedEx Print and Ship to get it bound. It was a little bit of a thing actually, finding a place that I could get to before or after work, carrying around two manuscripts all week. I went to Office Depot on Colfax one night only to find that it […]
Journals/rules
I have three working journals right now. I think what happened was I lost one. Well, I must have lost two. Because I used to keep two journals at a time one for journaling and one for lists and notes. So I must have lost both of them which was why I started a new […]
Devotion
It’s more than work. More than sacrifice. It is like dedication, but with a prayer. It’s something spiritual. I don’t think you can be devoted to quantifiable things. Like, you can’t be devoted to grad school. Because how grad school works is you pay money, take tests and then you get a degree. But I […]
Dream deferred
When I lived in Spain I taught English lessons to one of the French teachers, Javier, and his son Yann. The lessons happened at their kitchen table, at which Yann truly struggled to remain seated for the whole thirty minutes. When Yann left Javier and I would usually just chat in English. I learned a […]
Overshare?
I spent a lot of last year not really on social media. And not really writing this blog. Which begs the question: where have I been? A few days ago an old friend told me to come visit them in Vermont, thinking that I was still nearby in New York City. And I realized that […]
When it’s as good as you can get it
This is the answer I get when I ask: when am I done with my book? When it’s as good as you can possibly get it. Well, never then. I can edit forever. So I need to figure out some other kind of guideline. Maybe it’s done when I stop carrying my idea notebook with […]
To the poets
I spent a season in wonderment of composers of musicals. They have to know about so many things: writing music, the effects of different instruments, singing, choreography, storytelling. I went through a phase where I was jealous of visual artists. Because I felt like visual artists could do anything and get away with it. (Sorry […]
(Earth) resident
Today is my last day as a writer in residence in Nebraska City. I don’t want to go I love it here. I love getting up early to write. My favorite hours are the quiet ones when the light changes from grey to white. I’ve learned that at 7:40 every morning the school bus comes […]
Anne Foster 