I made something!  It’s called a book proposal. A proposal is a document that nonfiction writers send to agents, pitching their books. They’re complex beasts, containing blurbs from other writers, an overview of the book you’re writing, marketing plans, comparative book titles, chapter summaries for each chapter in the book even if you haven’t written the whole [...]

I’m writing a chapter for my book about 2005. The year my boys were three and thirteen. One was in a band, the other in training pants. It felt like my life was circling back on itself at the same time it was charging into uncharted territory. On the Christmas video that year, the older [...]

Last week I received a comment on an old post–one from five years ago, about T, titled, “I Don’t Like Reading”–from a reader named Sarah. I responded to her in the comments, and over the conversation that followed, I realized that there might be other parents out there feeling similar doubts right now. So with [...]

$175 and two days later they left. The package of bees I bought two years ago. I installed them and they absconded two days later. Who knows why? I should know what I’m doing; I’ve kept bees most years since 2009. Still, they took off. Left their hive cold and empty, $175 in their flown-off [...]

A month later, and apparently I am still obsessed with hands. Lynda Barry calls them “the original digital device.” I am also newly obsessed with Lynda Barry. It was her free two-hour drawing workshop that did it. Even though I am one of those people who doesn’t draw. Which is, it turns out, exactly the [...]

H, my oldest, gave me a pen for Christmas. One of my favorite gifts ever, for how beautifully it writes, and even more for the beauty in his consideration of this particular gift, for me. I’ve been using it to write my morning pages in my journal. Usually by page three, my hand gets tired [...]