Hardening
We’re driving on the highway behind a huge concrete truck. The revolving drum on top the truck mixes the concrete even while on the road. The concrete must be continually stirred or else it hardens and loses its workability. It hardens too fast and too soon. As the drum revolves, the right amount of water […]
Influence
Today I realize all the ways one might influence an environment. In writing, an author influences the mood of a piece by using primarily sensory detail: sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste. Writers generate moods for their readers; they manipulate language to produce sad moods, happy moods, suspicious moods, romantic moods, or humorous moods (among […]
Sooner
My shy daughter finally befriends a little girl she’s crossed paths with for years but never had the courage to approach. She finally invites the girl to play, and now, it feels like they’ve been best friends all this time. When I’m tucking my daughter in for bed, she says, “Mom, I have a regret. […]
“It’s All About Tension”: Writing and Living Advice
My amazing agent and I are working together to prepare a manuscript to submit to publishers. (It’s a contemporary adult novel that you’ll hear more about next month.) He says to me, “Always remember that tension is the lifeblood of the novel. You cannot resolve the tension too quickly.” In fact, he says, you want […]
It Changed Everything
Today, I read my students a single event memoir by Deidra Riggs. I’m asking them to choose a single event–a single moment of their lives–to narrate for a reader. The memoir, “Better Than the Ballroom”, takes just a few minutes to read. In this piece, Riggs transports us to an evening spent with her grandfather. […]
Wait! Where?
This morning, my oldest daughter cries out to her sister, “I’ll race you!” “OK!” the youngest one says, and they’re off! Suddenly, she stops and demands, “Wait! Where are we going, anyway?” She has her hands on her hips and her head cocked to one side. I’m washing breakfast dishes, and I think of the […]
A Most Extraordinary Piece of Art
An incredible artist, Ted Cantrell, sends my family a piece of his original artwork for our home. From the moment I remove this piece from its shipping box, I know I’m holding something extraordinary in my hands. This Texan Artist once found an old tree that had grown up through a barbed wire fence on […]
Gingersnap Tea and Almond Biscotti
Two days ago, I purchase mini almond biscotti for no reason at all. You can’t just eat biscotti, you have to dip it in tea (at least that’s how I do it since I don’t like coffee in the afternoon). So if you have biscotti, you simply must have tea. If you have tea, you […]
The Interview Game
My youngest daughter tells me today that her friends at school never ask her anything about herself. “I ask about them, but they don’t ask about me,” she explains. “I know what you mean,” I tell her. “Hardly anyone knows how to ask good questions of one another. We might need to learn how to […]
When She Steadies You
Today I’m roller skating with my oldest daughter, and I realize that for the first time in all these years, she’s steadying me. It’s one of those moments when I think about parenting differently. I think about the relationship between mothers and their almost teenage daughters. I flail my arms, grab on to her hand, […]