Before Tuesday’s election results, I was thinking about how five million Chicago-area fans celebrating the Cubs’ World Series victory boded well for the future of this country. I started this piece after witnessing the Cubs’ historic win, and it made me…
We write about the other with varying degrees of rigor and success. Homer’s default was narrow (white, male, hetero, warrior), but even that long ago he tasked himself with imagining his way into immortals. Chaucer wrote in the voice of…
Five years ago, I wrote a Tumblr post about how sometimes I hate my Work in Progress. Today, I turn in final edits to my editor for that same Work in Progress. After x amount of years (I’ve lost count)…
Recently, a cab driver was driving me home from the airport. After hearing I’d just come from Dallas, he gazed in the mirror back at me and loudly and, completely unsolicited, declared: “Everywhere you’ve been, darling, I’ve been. Everything you’ve…
NaNoWriMo has officially begun and not just for adults. Some teachers are even doing NaNoWriMo with their students. It’s pretty cool that trying to write a novel in a month has become a national tradition. I’m not starting a new…
Sometimes, you think: there’s no way I’ll meet this deadline. My brain is fried. My eyes burns. My motivation is at a low point. My fingers feel like fists on the keyboard. And then something magical happens. 12 hours later,…