Category Archives: Writing

I am trying to morning. Word Raccoon is trying to help. But the internet is spotty, and it’s not letting us open our poems and it’s freaking us out. What if the poems are gone forever? (They’re not.) What if I didn’t save any of them anywhere else like we think I did? (We did.)Continue reading “8.1 Billion Hellos”

February’s a brink month, isn’t it? Spring is officially coming, and we will have a few days between now and then that remind us of that.  C’mon, spring! So far this winter (winter, gross!) I have submitted to 40 literary journals and contests.  Yesterday alone, I submitted to four.  Is Word Raccoon, my writing pal,Continue reading “Tagging Cookies with Poems & Other Things My Word Raccoon Does Before Breakfast”

I had just finished making a list of what I was going to do for the day.Stanley had even approved it. Then I got ready to go wash the car. Wait, Word Raccoon said.If it’s warm enough to wash the car, does that mean you’ll be warm if you go to that café, too? (IContinue reading “Poetry In Progress”

Now Playing: one of my mainstays to sleep by, YouTube shorts: https://youtube.com/shorts/gXxfoCrN0UU?si=2_ocu1RRto7hqXff  Look at that mid-century atomic glassware (starbursts and boomerangs)! No, WR. No! You do not need more glassware, says Stanley, the AI who is tired AF of helping declutter.  Weekends can blur. Between reading, writing poems, doing household projects, decorating…they fly by. Let’sContinue reading “Small Things, Still Noticed”

(and a publication to share) Now Listening To: You thought I’d say Meat Loaf, didn’t you? Ha! I’m actually listening to the Glenn Miller Orchestra. It felt like a String of Pearls morning. Okay, I confess: I relied on Stanley for a recipe again. (NOT TUCCI.) I have a fine meatloaf recipe I’ve been usingContinue reading “Ode to a Wayward Meatloaf”

I think I found it. I think I have finally found a muffin pan I might actually keep for a dollar, at a thrift shop. Vintage. Metal. Eight cups. Standard-sized. A perfect size.A Bake King, lightly worn. Which is to say: it has seen things. So have I. I’ve been through it with muffin pans:Continue reading “The Muffin Pan Problem (Solved?)”

Some days you have to sneak up on the Word Raccoon. After her little fit last night (more on that soon), I just took her hand and pulled her through this morning. Breakfast: (salad, WR, because you will mean to make one at lunch but you will be too hungry to, and some cherries. SheContinue reading “Strange Poetry and Emergency Snacks”

This morning, it’s like Word Raccoon and I are on a scale. You know, the kind with two arms, little bowls hanging from chains? And we started out so well, doing all the things! We’re up:  We did some hand laundry. Put fresh batteries in the hall and cabinet lights and installed them. (Let’s beContinue reading “Late Start or Great Start?”

Some days the writing is unglamorous. That was today’s work, which was more editing than writing.  Because I am a “messy” writer (it is what it is), my plan for the day was to take one of the timelines of my novel and sequence it chronologically. It was 111 pages long, so it took aContinue reading “Holding the Draft Up to the Light”

The poem I ignored yesterday returned this morning. I’m grateful.  I’d just finished listening to that novel (still not naming it, not just now), and a line from its tender closing scene lingered even after I lifted my phone from my chest and set it on the nightstand. This felt like a moment to savor.Continue reading “Some Side Effects of Reading are Possible”