My monthly submissions to Lesley University's MFA program each include two craft annotations. When we "freshmen" were first presented with this requirement at our initial residency in June, the idea of writing a craft annotation about any book was enough to frighten many of us, but I was intrigued. After…
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Better Intentions
Budget Rental Vans squat curbside on the street. College boys with sinewy arms and authoritative expressions hoist their hastily labeled boxes up and into efficient stacks. They are leaving. They are through with this college town. New places and new challenges await them elsewhere. I know not the distance any…
Stumbling is good.
The paper plate is translucent with grease. I can make out the faux wood grain of the plastic surface beneath. My book lies face flat and wedged open on the table beside me. I cannot read now. Red sauce coats and drips from my fingers as I manipulate the molten…
Talent borrows; genius steals.
Choosing not to write tonight would be too easy. I could snap my laptop shut, flip my alarm clock on, swallow a pill, and turn out the lights. I could listen to the cars humming on Massachusetts Avenue nearby (or "Mass Ave" as the locals call it) and wonder about…
Open your mouth, let the words fly out.
In Annie Dillard's The Writing Life (my Bible while I'm here) she writes that poet Saint-Pol Roux used to hang a sign on his bedroom doorknob at night while he slept that read: The poet is working. I now think that's possible! Simply being here is jump starting my creativity.…
Land of a Thousand Libraries
How odd to watch night pull toward me from across the sea. My plane touched down at Logan and I shook my head, refusing to accept the glitch. We taxied, and the shadows pushed out long and westward. No , I thought, the ocean is supposed to swallow the setting sun,…
And If I Perish...
As part of my research for my pet fiction project (a novel which is embarrassingly incomplete and scattered for the number of months I've been "working" on it), I've been reading And If I Perish: Frontline U.S. Army Nurses in World War II . This is not an incredible work.…
Answering the Whale
Lately, trying to inspire my own writing has been like carefully cooking spaghetti. The water never boils and, after a while, when I do pull a limpid noodle from the froth and pitch it against the nearest wall, it tumbles down to the floorboards to hang with the dust bunnies.…