Memoirous

I just finished up a 6-week course through Story Studio Chicago designed to help participants to get off their butt. Yup! When I looked over the offerings at the end of 2021, after finishing the novel-in-a-year course with James Klise I started to think: What next? I’ve done just about everything—except an MFA. Conferences Workshops Critique groups Book festivals Pitch Wars All meant to keep me writing, engaged in the process, and hopefully, open up networking opportunities. Yes and no. The odds at Las Vegas craps tables are better than someone breaking into the writing world. Meaning: can make a living from writing their novels, short stories, etc. Most writers I know have to at least supplement their writing by taking on editing, teaching, freelance projects. Some become writing coaches—again, a side-hustle. And, why not parlay a bit of name recognition into a niche business? It’s become standard practice. Sheree our instructor did an excellent job. She teaches a fe...

At the end of 2021, after finishing a novel-in-a-year course with James Klise at Story Studio Chicago, I was wondering: What next? I’ve always kept tucked away in my brain something I heard Walter Dean Myers say at a Zena Sutherland Lecture at the Chicago Public Library. He told the audience that he wrote every day. Even if traveling, he’d sit in his hotel room. Every morning. And, I believed him. The man, he has since passed, was prolific. He wrote for about EVERY audience: picture books, coffee table books, middle grade, young adult, historical fiction etc etc. He was a great man. A progressive, breaking so many barriers with his humanity and words. So how does one write every day no matter what? I, on the other hand, need to be pricked and prodded. Thus, I signed up for Jumpstart Your Novel with Sheree Greer through Story Studio Chicago. The premise was that as I began a dreary, Covid-filled year, our third since the pandemic, a weary white winter in Michigan, a 2022 yawning before...

  Puddles at the end of the sidewalk sabotage my egress I hop over frozen humps mummified slush piles slip, sinking in ankle-deep soaking my shoe, sock Shock! Like knives, cold pricks the skin, the blood I look for channels, troughs of pavement in which to step This will be my escape winter into spring running toward the sweet sound of birds calling across a     White World

I heard recently that viewership of this Winter Olympics is down 40%. I can attest to this. Ever since I can remember I’ve been an avid Olympics watcher. An Olympic watcher, top of the podium, sit on the couch viewer—except lsast year for the Summer Games and this winter. Finally the limitations of cutting the cable has caught up with me. I know, I know it’s only $4.99 to sign up for Peacock to be able to stream, but it’s more than the money. Sort of. I used to just be able to turn on my TV and watch for FREE. Now I don’t have a TV, an antenna, none of it. With almost everything else I can stream . . . I’m looking for an easy way to watch. Also lately, and maybe it’s because I’m an old lady I’ve been shunted into signing up for so much JUNK I don’t want. I’m killer at Googling, it is my writer/researcher instinct, but I’m still naïve enough around the internet to click on and think I need to sign in to do this or that, like recently when doing my taxes, or getting a Windows que...

I reckon there is about 15 inches on the ground, The bare tree boughs are laden with snow. A black squirrel leaps from branch to branch and sends an avalanche cascading down. It seems a cliché, but it really does look like a blanket, a soft sculpture undulating, smooth, indeed, inviting. No one has yet to trample on it. Yesterday I set out on a walk and found some spots up to my knees. All around me was a hush—the kind of subdued world one only gets in the midst of cataclysm, when everything stops. Until I turn a corner and come upon a snow blower, whirling away, shooting snow, ** Walking to work after the storm. I cleared the snow off the car, but decided against using it. I mean it’s not really MY car. As I was walking toward the entrance of my complex I saw a car get stuck and the passenger of another vehicle, a truck, hopped out, and retrieve a shovel from the back to dig the car out. This affirmed my self-doubts about leaving the car parked for now. Surprisingly, her...

I wrote last time about getting out into nature here in Michigan. I try to think of why this feels different—than say Chicago, in Uptown, where I was literally 2 blocks from the lake. The lake was a lifesaver all the while living in Chicago. As a poor person, I might not be able to go to the movies or stop in whenever I wanted to at Starbucks for a catch-me-up cup, but I could always for free go to the lake, stand by the shore and feel like a rich person. All that changed under the pandemic when Mayor Lori Lightfoot shut down the lakefront, banned people from congregating in the parks, and put up fences keeping us out. To be fair, I saw it comin’. The first nice-ish day after lockdown everyone and their brother was out. I thought then this will not last—and sure enough the next day the hammer came down. Police were stationed at all access points into the park and lakefront. Now, I did get out, or tried to once a day. I’d go down the hall at my building and see if my friend’s thir...

When I was 17 my sister and I went to a Winter Outdoor trade show in Dayton, Ohio and I walked away with a cross-country ski package. It was an investment that has lasted a lifetime. Unfortunately, not the skis. I’m now into my second pair of skis and third pair of boots. Maybe because I fall a lot or because of the rapid changes of cold into a warm basement, etc the bindings and vulnerable stress points have snapped or cracked. Thus, I’ve had to update that original pair from almost 50 years ago. Lately, though it’s been hard to get on the track. Maybe it’s old age or climate change, but there hasn’t been the opportunity. Until I moved to Michigan. Once the snow started falling and stayed on the ground I’ve been cross-country skiing instead of running. First, I had to remember exactly how it was done. Just getting into those flimsy clapboards and having them stick to my new boots was a renewed learning curve. As a co-worker once remarked: it’s the sport where you can’t stop....

  We’re currently under a Winter Storm Watch (February 1). Temps have been each evening near 0, zero degrees. During the day, it gets into the upper teens. I’ve been cross-country skiing instead of going for a run. This a.m. a south wind has begun to blow and the morning is melting the snow on the sidewalks, little rivulets spreading into the cracks. I decided to run and had to puddle jump as well as keeping an eye out for slick spots in the shade. Later today it will begin to rain and overnight turn to snow. All and all we’re supposed to receive 6 – 12 inches of snow. If this actually happens, I’ll report it here. Until then . . . the birds are atwitter and the sun is shining, tempting spring, teasing us as we wait to get whalloped. As we wait for miracles, the earth turning on its axis, a return to distant warmth.

For readers of this blog, both of you, you know I like metafiction. Well, there is a film within this film, just as there is an island within an island. The film references Bergman’s films, which become a sort of jumping off point for the film, where about half way through the main characters, both script writers and directors, begin to tell another story. Confused yet? Just hang in there. Because I’m about to tell you what I think the movie is about—or the theory it provoked. I’m a writer who was once married to a writer. Just like in the movie, we were both at different stages of our career. BUT, and this is an important BUT . . . women who choose to have children have chosen to put their art aside at least for a bit. The adage that we can have it all, well, that person was in lala-land. It is possible to be a mother and create, but what I’m talking about is the person who desires to devote themselves full-time to art and at the same time mother. Yes, there are nannies and gr...

First, let me say I’ve been to Bergman’s Island. All by accident. I was in Gotland, a place I hadn’t first planned on. You see in 2014 I went to Sweden to see some old friends. While visiting with Lotta in Tronas she said to go to Gotland, it made more sense to insert it into my itinerary than my original plan. So I quickly booked tickets on a ferry leaving from a town south of Stockholm, went on a hike, got lost, almost missed my train, arrived late for the ferry, ran to catch it, and was the last passenger aboard. The man in the safety vest closed the door behind me. Or was it a gangplank? Anyway, I rented a bicycle in Gotland, even though it was after the tourist season and at first seemed impossible. It was only the second week in September and the skies were blue and the weather wonderful. Nevertheless, many restaurants and accommodations had shuttered. I was given a map of the island and stopped at little churches and a local harvest festival on my first day. The harvest fe...