My head was hurting. A lot. Not quite to the point of wanting to throw up, but close. Not a migraine which I do not get. It was a sinus headache, which I do get thanks to some unpleasant encounters with a baseball during my childhood. I have Tylenol for such occasions, but it was […]
“Jerome Bernard Parent, what are you doing?” my mother asked. Uh oh. Full name. I’m in trouble. “I’m just reading,” I said, showing her the book. “That’s rude for a guest to be doing. Now go outside with the other kids and play.” “All right,” I said. “In a minute.” I peeked down the stairs.
The Dark Side of the Pooh Read More »
It is not singular that, as the daughter of two persons of distinguished literary celebrity, I should very early in life have thought of writing. As a child I scribbled; and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to “write stories.” Still I had a dearer pleasure than this, which was
Mary Shelley: “my dreams were all my own” Read More »
Many years ago, a navy chief warrant officer said to me, “Walker, all it takes to erase a thousand ‘attaboys’ is one ‘Aw, shit.’” What he was telling me in his gruff, salty way was that no matter how much good someone does, a single poor performance can wipe it all away, at least in
Absorbing Criticism, or Looking for a Happy Place Between Confidence and Self-Doubt Read More »
The further I got into life, the worse my life became and the more I needed to write about it. The more I expressed my feelings through written words, the less I wanted to give into urges of self-pity. Writing didn’t destroy all the bad thoughts that tormented me, but it allowed me to think
Quite a few years ago, when I first read Stephen King’s excellent book On Writing, I thought about how cool it would be to have as many rejection slips as King, the ones he talks about collecting in a desk drawer. Submit a story, get a refusal, into the drawer it goes, out with another submission.
Holding Out for Acceptance: Submission, Rejection, Submission, Repetition Read More »