Little Life Lessons from My Run in the Woods

1. Do not berate your body for not going as far as it used to. Be grateful it has carried you this long and held up well through illness, grief, and broken relationships, always propelling you forward.

2. This morning, your husband runs in wide and long circles around you, ensuring your safety. Sometimes you orbit him in life; sometimes he, you. In a strong partnership, no one can always be the sun; everyone has to take turns being the planet.

3. Behold the ferns, thriving in shadow. Sometimes darkness offers as much a chance to grow as light does.

4. None of these birds care what troubles you brought into these woods. They sing, despite your worry. Their days are not clouded by your anxiety.

5. In these woods are dead things, though you cannot always see them. This is the way of this Earth and you must learn to let things go.

6. The rhododendron blooms today. As does the yellow coreopsis, the thimbleberry. Never mind the rain, the cold, the heat.

7. The sunlight leaks down through the cracks between branches. You just have to move a little to one side or the other to see it. You can stand still, but it will take much longer that way to find the light.

8. There will always be people who run faster than you. It’s okay to be passed. Slowing down allows you to notice what you used to overlook.

9. These chestnut oaks came into this world before you, and they will outlive you. What will you do with the moments you’ve been given? 

10. There is so much to hear. You spend so much time in your head, but the world is trying to talk to you. This morning, this evening, every day: Listen.

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Upcoming Seminars & Workshops

Let’s Write Together!
Tuesdays at noon EST: July 13, 27 and August 3, 10, 17, 24
Having a hard time finding inspiration and motivation to write? Join me for any (or all) of these online one-hour sessions on Tuesdays at noon EST. We’ll talk about a piece of writing, I will give you a prompt, and then you will WRITE. These workshops are part of Press 53’s High Road Festival of Poetry and Short Fiction. Cost: $10/session.
Register for any of them here.

Make Your Titles Do More of the Heavy Lifting
Wednesday, August 4, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. EST
Titles should serve your poetry (and prose) rather than simply helping to navigate the contents page. Using poetry titles as examples so we can cover more ground during this short seminar, together we'll look at titles that work hard and offer zing and pizzazz so that your own titles will entice readers and better serve your writing. (What is covered in this seminar applies to flash fiction and flash nonfiction titles, too.) Cost: $30. 
Register here.

Moments that Matter: an Introduction to Flash Nonfiction
Thursday, August 12, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. EST
In this online workshop, we’ll talk about what flash nonfiction is, how it works, and why it works. Together we’ll mine some powerful flash pieces for effective techniques you can use in your own writing. Cost: $30. Register here.

The Art of Memoir & Personal Essay:
A Generative Writing Workshop
Wednesdays, August 18-September 15, 1:30-4:00 p.m. EST
Join me in this five-week, online (Zoom) workshop during which you will generate new writing, read writing that inspires, and learn some tools and techniques on the craft of personal essay/memoir writing. There are no critiques in this workshop. The goal is for you to leave with first drafts and a writer’s toolbox ready to help you finish and write the rest of your own life stories. Regular Rate: $349; Early Bird Rate going on now: $299. Space is limited. Learn more here. Register here.

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A Small Thing to Want: Stories
Won the 2021 Independent Publisher Bronze Medal for Short Fiction

On sale now here (price includes S&H in the United States).

“It is the most exceptional short story collection I have read in quite some time.” —Dayton Daily News

A Small Thing to Want chronicles the choices people make about whom to love and whom to let go, their yearnings that either bind them or set them free, and the surprising ways love shows up, without reason or restraint. The characters in these stories long for freedom, truth, friendship, courage, and second chances, but each person will have to grapple with the consequences and costs of their desires. (Published by Press 53, 2020.)

The Smart Phone Detoxification Experimentation

It all started about ten years ago. The smart phone. The I-know-how-to-keep-you-coming-back phone. Even after all the news came out about how the phone companies purposefully created this little monster to keep us addicted, I could not quite kick the habit. I still have not. 

For long-time readers, you know this is not my first attempt to manage my love-hate relationships with my phone, to ameliorate its bad effects, which for me are a constant urge to check the stupid thing, to scroll mindlessly through apps (email, news, website stats, social media), and to feel a constant need for stimulation when there is a quiet moment. I feel like I am losing my ability to focus without distraction. And that is frightening.

In short, my smart phone is making me feel stupid.

It seems that every year I do a phone cleanse and then as soon as it ends, my bad habits creep back in. But here I am, trying again.

Today I am on Day 8 of the 2021 Smart Phone Detox. These are my rules:

Keep the cell phone off most of the day when I am at home. Having it on, even somewhere else is in the house, does not keep me from checking it. After all, I like to get up from my desk and stretch anyway, so having it upstairs when I’m downstairs is no deterrent. I let myself turn it on and check it about four times a day. I am hoping I can cut this back further, but I need it for texts. (Need?? Ugh. Not sure this is true.)

Forward calls to my landline. I LOVE my landline. Always have.

If I leave the house for work, errands, appointments, I can turn it on if needed.

Even when out and about, do not scroll mindlessly through apps. Case in point: yesterday I had a doctor’s appointment, and my physician was running (unusually) very late—an hour and forty-five minutes late—and I read a book (and finished it) and then forced myself to stare out the window at the trees and the birds even though my impulse was to use my phone for entertainment. I’ve been listening to experts talk about how whenever we have an unfilled moment, we reach for our phones (dopamine!) instead of letting our minds just focus on the world right in front of us. I did that yesterday. It was uncomfortable at first not to be checking my phone (what if an important text came through or there was an email from Gayle King???), but after a while, it felt good to just be in the moment and let my mind wander. I used to do so much more of that before the cell phone era.

I figure if I can do this for 28 days, I might just break my habit of the constant checking. Even though I am not doing this perfectly, and it’s only Day 8, I can tell you this: I like my life better with less of my smart phone.

A lot.

Now should I text all my friends about this? Just kidding.

Photo credit: Christina Rumpf from Unsplash.com

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Upcoming Seminars

Let’s Write Together!
Having a hard time finding inspiration and motivation to write? Join me for any (or all) of these online one-hour sessions on Tuesdays at noon EST. We’ll talk about a piece of writing, I will give you a prompt, and then you will WRITE. These workshops are part of Press 53’s High Road Festival of Poetry and Short Fiction. Cost: $10/session. June 22, July 6, July 13, July 27, noon EST. Register for any of them here.

All You Have to Do Is Get into The New York Times (Part 2)

Years ago, when I was in Earth Fare shopping, my husband and I met someone with whom he had grown up. We got to talking and discovered we were each writing memoirs. The difference? She had a publisher. And a contract. And a deadline. I was still, at that time, just writing my memoir hoping someone, someday, would want it. Which I admitted to her (all the while wishing I could say to her: “You have a publisher? Oh, me too, me too.”)

As the story goes, she said to me, “All you have to do is get published in The New York Times.” Which is what she had done. As if that were the easiest thing in the world. On her first try, she had gotten a piece into The NYT Modern Love column and boom bim bam, she had a publisher for a memoir she had not even written.

Needless to say, I tried to get into Modern Love a time or two or three billion, and I was unsuccessful. That was years ago. Eventually I finished my memoir (The Going and Goodbye) and got a publisher; I finished a short story collection (A Small Thing to Want) and got a publisher; and I finished a poetry collection (Trouble Can Be So Beautiful at the Beginning) and got a publisher.

And somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to get into Modern Love or The New York Times.

Until a few weeks ago.

That’s when I attended a virtual literary festival and heard the editor of The NYT Tiny Love Stories speak—about what she looked for, what she didn’t like, what she wanted out of a submission. Each story is a maximum of 100 words—thus why it is called tiny (not because it’s made of stories about pitiful love—like what you feel for the person you care for just enough to meet for a drink but only if your favorite Netflix series doesn’t have a new episode out).

I thought, well, why not try to write a Tiny Love Story? Sure, it would be like throwing a paper airplane into a gusty wind, but I could at least have fun folding the airplane and sending it off, right? I’m a writer. I have thrown a zillion paper airplanes into the gusty winds of the publication world. (I have submitted to The New Yorker more than a handful of times—that should tell you how unafraid I am of gusty winds and how I have thick goggles to protect me when the airplane zips back all pointylike and darts right into the center of my face).

So I sat down, and I took a 300-word poem about Barney, our Jack Russell Terrier whom I had adored, and I chiseled it (not the dog) down to 100 words of prose. 

Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy and it took quite a bit of time. I had to figure out what was most important (everything!) and how to pluck out the best parts of a sentence. I had to leave behind things I loved. But it was fun. So I folded my little airplane Tiny Love Story and sent it off to The NYT. I expected nothing. Well, that’s not true: I hoped to at least hear back a “We got your submission” and then later a “Thank you but…” (that’s how rejections always start out), but I realized big publications often don’t have time to send out those kinds of correspondence. 

And then I did what any writer does who’s been around the block a few times: I started on the next one. Not because I am a masochist (although you could argue that all writers…) but because it was fun.

And then something really strange happened. You know how you hear about these stories of someone out in the middle of a desert, all alone, and suddenly spotting a UFO? Well, the editor emailed me back (she is not the UFO in this story), asked some follow-up questions, and then a few days later, accepted my piece. The acceptance is the UFO because IT’S FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES. 

Of course I immediately thought back to that time in Earth Fare and that person who told me that all I had to do was get published in The New York Times.

Last week, I finally did. 

You can read my Tiny Love Story here.

Photo by Harry Shelton from Unsplash.com.

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Upcoming Seminars

Make Your Titles Do More of the Heavy Lifting
May 26, 2021, 6:30-8 p.m. EST
Titles should serve your poetry (and prose) rather than simply helping to navigate the contents page. Using poetry titles as examples so we can cover more ground during this short seminar, together we'll look at titles that work hard and offer zing and pizzazz so that your own titles will entice readers and better serve your writing. (What is covered in this seminar applies to flash fiction and flash nonfiction titles, too.) This program is part of Press 53’s High Road Festival of Poetry and Short Fiction. Cost: $30. Register here.

The Art of Memoir & Personal Essay: A Generative Writing Workshop
June 9-July 7, 2021 (Wednesdays), 2:30-5 p.m. (EST)
Join me in this five-week, online (Zoom) workshop during which you will generate new writing, read writing that inspires, and learn some tools and techniques on the craft of personal essay/memoir writing. There are no critiques in this workshop. The goal is for you to leave with first drafts and a writer’s toolbox ready to help you finish and write the rest of your own life stories. Space is limited. Learn more here. Cost: $349. Register here.