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The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

I read and loved this book back in January. Months later, I still have the book next to my bed and reread the stories often. Searching through old files on my computer, I came across these impressions I wrote down when I first read each story. Notes on Deesha Philyaw’s “The Secret Lives of Church …

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The spine of Hitchhiker’s Guide

See also: Mini-essays on chapters 1-2 and chapters 3-4. In The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp talks about the “spine” of a work — not the inspiration, which could be a story or image that sparked the initial idea, and not the theme. But the underlying story you started out wanting to tell, no matter how …

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Hitchhiker’s Guide, chapters 3 and 4

Here’s my mini-essay on the first two chapters. Chapter 3 starts with the Vogon ships gliding unnoticed toward Earth, zoomed way out into space. “On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through the ionosphere many miles above the surface of the planet; several somethings in fact, several dozen huge yellow chunky slablike somethings, huge …

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Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, chapters 1 and 2

In which I spend 14 or so days reading sections of one of my all-time favorite books, Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and trying to understand how he wrote it. Nothing about Arthur is actually funny or appealing, which I imagine is intentional. There’s so much weirdness around that Arthur’s slight resistance …

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DIY Writing Retreat

“What I really want,” I said to a writer friend, “what I was going to request for my birthday this year, is to go on a writers’ retreat.” “Why don’t you?” she replied. She told me about her recent solo retreat, a 5-day Airbnb rental 45 minutes from home. I thought about this every day …

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Generativity versus stagnation

For months I have written so much in my head and so little on paper, except scenes of my novel which will be rewritten until the original words are buried deep underneath. In Lori Gottlieb’s excellent “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone,” a memoir of her experiences as a therapist, she pauses to recap Erik …

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Our new lives

The last day of in-person school was Thursday, March 12th. It has been a month. On March 12th, I got up and went to work as usual. I didn’t get much done. I kept closing my door, trying to focus and shut out the panicked coronavirus conversation. It didn’t work. My coworkers would knock and …

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Why I love Elizabeth Warren

I wrote this as an op-ed but looking at it again, it’s not opinionated enough. Posting this here while working on a new version in a hurry ahead of Super Tuesday. (Update: here’s the final version on Medium, Why I’m Voting for Elizabeth Warren.) Knowing I was about to face Elizabeth Warren, a notoriously tough …

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A moment of anger

Today I am allowing myself a rare indulgence. Today I am angry about being the only woman in the room at work, the only person of color in the room at community gatherings. Today I allow myself a moment to acknowledge that every time I make a joke about this, it costs me something. And …

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