A while back I wrote a post called Saying No and Saying Yes, about how hard it is to turn down invitations, whether they’re social or professional. I turned another one down this past week. It made me think again about why it’s so hard. I wrote then: An invitation suggests that the sender values you [...]
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At the risk of resembling the spring bloom on the bottom right in the excellent botanical guide by Dylan Meconis pictured above, I want to talk a little about how yoga is helping my writing. I take yin yoga classes. Someone today called it naptime yoga, and it’s true that it’s almost entirely done seated or [...]
One of the guys at the gym has Clarke Peters-level gravitas. So for purposes of this post, I’m gonna just call him Lester. Lester’s a trainer. And although I am not officially being trained by him, he sometimes trains me anyway. One day I was doing squats. I really want to be able to squat [...]
Diana Wynne Jones almost made me miss my flight. I was so entirely inside FIRE AND HEMLOCK that it was only the final boarding call that managed to penetrate my consciousness. Are you surprised that I was reading it for the first time? Me, too. But somehow I grew up without discovering her work, and [...]
April 12th is Support Teen Literature Day. It’s also the day my parents — both librarians — got married. Their wedding favors? Bookmarks. Because our house was full of books, because they read to me, because I grew up feeling like libraries were my second home, because they always supported and took seriously my desire to [...]
Things. They are HAPPENING. Three are Portlandcentric, one is not. NonPDXcentric: Remember how I have a story, “Fair Trade,” with art by the fabulous and now Eisner Award-nominated Dylan Meconis in Welcome to Bordertown? Now you can acquire a fetching and affordable paperback edition! For Portlanders: Remember how I have an essay, “Nineteen Panels About [...]
I have mentioned my Nerdy Little Workout Notebook before, more than once. It coexists constantly in my bag with my journal and my writing ideas notebook. Yes, that is a lot of notebooks to lug around. But they help. Today is my Nerdy Little Workout Notebook’s one-year anniversary. Now I ain’t tryin to turn this into [...]
Things I am doing, an incomplete selection: Making oatmeal with a lot of stuff in it. Tips: toast the pecans before you chop them. Use frozen blueberries when fresh ones are out of season. Frozen banana works too, and is actually great with the toasted pecan. Do not stint on the cinnamon. Working on my [...]
No empty trips. A casual search suggests that this advice has its origins in the restaurant industry. Save time by consolidating. When you’re bringing the drinks for table two, if you’ve got room on the tray, get the calamari to table three. On your way back to the kitchen, grab the empty glasses from table four, [...]
I’m trying to figure out whether to write an as-yet-unformed narrative as prose or as the script for a graphic novel. Prose Pros: – Control. Being totally in charge of the world I’m creating. – Being free to write about things that are hard to draw without fear that I’ll eventually make an artist’s life [...]
