To those girls in the late nineties and at the turn of the century, those teenagers, who found each other through their blogs years before “blog” was a word. To those girls who resisted using the word “blog” when it did become a word. To those girls who felt the allure of a secret online …
Recently I transfered a few old home movies from VHS to digital files to send to my brother in Germany. We discuss them over Skype, telling each other to go to a certain time marker and pay attention. What do you notice? What did that mean? Was this how you remembered it? Was I like …
Winter has traditionally been my best writing season. My brain, which sloshes around sluggishly all summer, wakes up and wants to get to work. However, this winter I seem to still be “recovering” from the intensity of my Humber writing mentorship. Either that, or I’m still shaking off the holiday laziness. Though lately the weather …
There’s a new entry on Lumisilla mailla, the blog I write with my friend Susanna. I’m really enjoying making this blog with her. It feels like the cardboard “mailboxes” my childhood best friend and I kept on our front porches, and we’d write notes to each other and run across the street and pop them …
My oldest friend is visiting home, and we spend the afternoon discovering new pathways in the park, discovering washed-up bones and watching people fish in the river. We follow that river and find a spot to sit, and we sit talking for a very long time, as we tend to do. People walk past us …
I had a bulleted list of highlights written out about my seven-hour day spent at the International Festival of Authors (mostly) with Teri, but for some reason it all seems so personal. I think it has to do with the feeling of being a fan in the way Teri so wonderfully described it. I met my …
My friend has loaned me a book. The author is half-Filipino, just like my friend and me. I read it eagerly. It feels familiar. The author’s writing style reminds me so much of my friend’s, and I relish the glimpses of the suburban neighbourhoods we grew up in. I read it on the subway, standing …
Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know of grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera …
As of late: 1) A short story of mine, “Breathing Underwater”, was published at my friend Leesa’s new site WhiskeyPaper. It’s a really wonderful site, and I’m thrilled to be included. 2) My lovely friend Susanna and I are collaborating on a blog, Lumisilla Mailla, which means “in snowy lands” in Finnish. There are only …
Best background noise to read to. This was a few days ago. Last night there was rain, but there was intense thunder and flashing lightning, too, all around us, all the time. All summer I’ve been longing for a really good thunderstorm and then I got what I asked for, one so great it scared …