Skye Andrade
January 2016
I avert my eyes as I walk past a cluster of Lululemon clad women, and shift my generic yoga mat from the right side of my body to the left, in an attempt to disguise it amongst the sea of expensive Manduka’s.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
January 2016
If you bring out two desserts to a guest and ask which one the guest prefers, you might say, “Would you like this” and show the brownie or “ would you like that” and indicate the snickerdoodle. The guest will know which you are referring to as you raise each plate with the cookies on them.
Read Moreby Noelle Sterne
December 2015
Especially on dark and blocked days, I question why I write. Like other writers, at such depressive times I come up with a lot of reasons that seem extremely justified. Here are four gloomy statements you may blushingly recognize that I’ve repeated and have often heard from writing colleagues. With these seemingly unyielding pronouncements, though, I offer equally reasonable remedies, persuasions, and arguments that may just save us all.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
December 2015
It seems that we always have trouble with those pesky little commas. In a recent edit of student papers, I discovered that apparently the functions of commas in compound sentences are no longer being taught. They were universally absent in all 30 papers I had to grade.
Read MoreTiffany Pitts
December 2015
In 2012, I discovered my aunt Becky had stage three breast cancer. She was mentally disabled. She did not drive. She barely spoke to anyone. But Becky and I have always been close, so I moved her into our basement and took her to the doctor. I did not begrudge her my time. How could I?
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
December 2015
When I was eight I had a hard time transitioning to a new school. I walked there each morning with a vacated spirit – absent before they’d called my name, absent once they did. I sent my body on to do what I was supposed to while I remained observing from a distance. That was the first time I can remember the distress of mentally pulling away from the moment.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
October 2015
Apparently we have to bring out reminders periodically to keep people in top form. Yesterday a voice on the radio said he had a “whole nother” idea. I know we have a ton of lazy expressions like this, and we know what the guy meant, but let’s stop using them – at least when anyone can hear.
Read Moreby Terry Persun
October 2015
I’ve been writing for a long time and I’m, well, up there in age. So, when I was asked to teach writing skills to eight teenagers from a private school, I froze. My first thought was that I would be over their heads, or they’d see me as just some old dude going on about passion and commitment, then stop listening when I got to craft.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
October 2015
From the time they were small, both my sons ran around the backyard in deep self-conversation, exploring ideas, acting out scenes. If they had a thought that excited them, they could always be found outside, running back and forth, thinking. Eventually, their unconscious, repetitive thought movements wore a track in our lawn.
Read Moreby Noelle Sterne
September 2015
At least twenty years after their appearance in pop (or intelligentsia) culture, I discovered memes. Richard Brodie’s seminal book The Virus of the Mind, despite its rather intentionally sensational title, is the study of the meme. He gives appropriate credit to the word’s originator, Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins (in The Selfish Gene, 1976).
Read Moreby Terry Persun
September 2015
AI recently gave a talk on “Befriending the Giant” where I explored Amazon’s more than a dozen programs for authors. That talk took all day and was very intense, and still it was impossible to get very deeply into how to work with Amazon on a broader scale. So, for this piece I’d like to discuss how an author might increase their Amazon footprint.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
September 2015
The day after my birthday, I went on Facebook to find only a few notices from friends wishing me a happy day. A wave of un-lovability, rejection, and no one cares filled my mind. Simultaneously, I found my entanglement with this needy kind of thinking disappointing and embarrassing. I like to consider myself further along in my evolution and ability to maintain equanimity – but you know....
Read MoreSarah Kolb-Williams
October 2015
Whether you’re self-publishing, traditionally publishing, or working with a small press, editing is a crucial part of the publishing process. But it’s just as important to work on your own manuscript as much as you can first, before an editor ever gets involved.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
September 2015
This morning the voice on the radio announced that something was “the exact same” product as another one. Then an article in the paper said food makers are having a hard time finding natural colorings to replace artificial ones so food can be “the same exact shade of yellow.” Stop for a minute and think about that. If you say something is the same as something else, doesn’t that mean they aren’t different from each other?
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
August 2015
The passive voice, some form of to be used with the past participle of a verb, can be effective if used intentionally.
In the following sentence, the writer does not tell who did the action. The subject (the bill) is the object of the action, and the emphasis is on the action and the object acted upon.
Read MoreLinda Summersea
August 2015
The first time I got paid for doing it was… for writing, of course.
There was a church in our town on the corner of School Street and Main – the United Church of Christ – where “Ballroom Dancing & Etiquette Classes” were held for eighth graders. My mother refused to let me attend.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
August 2015
In my art school days, I decided to take a sculpture class. I had no desire to take it, but had heard that students should be exposed to all media. So, I signed up. It started out and ended up a bad fit, which included a strained relationship with my professor. My clarity and confidence went out the window. When I finally completed something, his critique was fair enough, but also brutally unconstructive.
Read MoreSara Jones
August 2015
Last summer at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference, I spoke to Jared John Smith about his then-upcoming memoir Rabbit (his first, Pink Fish Press, 2014). Bright with the generosity and on-earthedness of a newly published author, he said that in his doubting moments, the belief that Rabbit could help people kept him going.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
July 2015
Almost everyone knows the “rule” that says you must never end a sentence with a preposition. They irony is that most people who know this rule don’t know what a preposition is. And they don’t know that there are exceptions.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
July 2015
When I was a little kid, my friend Wendy and I discovered the first floor of her family’s carriage house – an outbuilding behind their main house. The upper floor had been renovated and was being rented. But the ground level room had become a dumping ground. The space was crowded and filthy – filled with old furniture, a refrigerator, pieces of wood, and all kinds of odds and ends.
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