This week, one of my students wanted to talk more about dialogue because she was having trouble writing realistic, moving dialogue in her nonfiction. It’s a common problem, I think, for beginning writers because their instinct is to write dialogue in a vacuum: he said, she said, he said, etc. I want my students to…
Read MoreNo luck on Thanksgiving not gorging myself. In fact, I ate excessively all weekend. And now I have a horrible cold. (Not that these two things are related. I only wanted to point out that I’ve been uncomfortable—in slightly different ways—for many days now. With Sudafed off limits I’d actually go so far to say…
Read MoreI was tagged by kyra at this mom with this writing meme almost a month ago, and I’ve been avoiding doing it. I am supposed to identify five writing strengths and list them here, but I find it so difficult to identify my strengths as a writer when I haven’t actually been writing. Before Stella…
Read MoreOn Sunday afternoon I went to see The Mother Project at the Open Eye Figure Theatre in Minneapolis. It was a six woman production, directed by Augsburg College theater professor Darcey Engen, in which the women’s stories about motherhood, relationships, identity, grief, their careers, and how they balance art and work and motherhood were woven…
Read MoreFirst, thank you for all the supportive comments on my last post. I really appreciate it, and I actually feel much better this week (if the sensation of having vomit at the top of my throat can be considered “better.”) But, the nausea and tiredness are good things, clear signals that I am, indeed, pregnant.…
Read MoreThere are a few essays so well-written that I could use them to teach each element of craft. Jill Christman’s “The Allergy Diaries” is one of these essays. “The Allergy Diaries” describes Christman’s infant daughter’s anaphylactic reaction to cow’s milk and the aftermath of this discovery. That is the situation in the essay. The real…
Read MoreOn Friday night, D. and I went to see Figaro at Teatre de la Jeune Lune. We don’t do this sort of thing very often, and that afternoon I almost wished we weren’t going. I had a gazillion things to do, I was exhausted, and we were babysitting Stella’s cousin. Our house was strewn with…
Read MoreThis morning, I woke up at 1:45 a.m. when my darling girl yelled from her room: “Mama, I had a nightmare. Lie with me. Lie with me, mama.” Now that Stella is no longer allowed to sleep in our bed, this is a frequently heard phrase in our house (and it is never ignored, which…
Read MoreFriday night, D. and I and a bunch of friends went to see the Zinedine Zidane movie at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. It’s a documentary in which 17 cameras follow Zidane for 92 minutes, a full soccer game. The audience was mostly soccer fans with colorful team scarves wrapped around their necks. (Even…
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