Change Makes Cents

Change Makes Cents

I had a dream once about having my house broken into. In waking life, I had just been dumped and was broken hearted. The dream happened while I was away on a spiritual retreat and nursing my pain. In it, I came home and heard the rustle of an intruder in my bedroom. I...
Pregnancy Killed My Creativity

Pregnancy Killed My Creativity

I had fantasies about how hugely creative I would be while pregnant — my body’s creation of a new person would ignite unprecedented levels of inspired creativity for my brain. I never expected how appallingly far off that was. My brain had never before...
21 Ways Writing is Like Menstruating

21 Ways Writing is Like Menstruating

1. It’s never neat and tidy. It doesn’t feel comfortable in clothes. While it hurts, it doesn’t hurt in the typical way but is heavy and low and pulling, like roots — not pleasant but real and necessary and satisfying. 2. It doesn’t ask...
It’s Not Blood That Makes a Family

It’s Not Blood That Makes a Family

On our first date, Lucy told me that she was attending couples counseling with her husband. They were separated, but when they were together their marriage had been open. Recently healed from a broken heart—another married woman who, in the end, did not leave her...
Is this a fiction novel?

Is this a fiction novel?

There is a common ingredient to all writing I find most compelling: soul-baring honesty. This is true for both fiction and nonfiction. Most of what’s considered nonfiction is actually fiction, as it’s necessarily filtered through a perception shaped by...