A belated list of things that have kept me distracted from this lately, with unrelated photos from my recent trip to New York, where I went for a writing retreat upstate–that’s me with my writing mentor, Kate Moses–and to hang out with my two older kiddos in NYC. Laurie Colwin reissues. Years ago–okay, decades ago–when [...]

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 [...]