Author: Collette
-
Nashville.
Some things are too terrible to feel. Somewhere in the deepest, most primitive part of the brain, a spark is lit; a mechanism switches on. The brain turns one palm out, and wraps the other around the heart. Do something. Everyone is screaming at the sky, their voices a choir of unharmonious clamor. Lips curl…
-
The Race of Faithfulness
I’m reading my book. Not as in, my book of the month, one I pulled off the shelf at the charming but over-priced bookstore on Main Street. (Yes, my town has a true-blue Main Street, that is in fact the main street on which to be). I’m reading my book. I’ve finished my novel, you…
-
People My Age Aren’t Having Children.
I’ve heard peers say that children mean the end of a life. I close my eyes, hoping she will mirror me. I think of all the things I would have been doing two years ago, before she came. In the sea of white noise, there is a gentle brushing on my hand as the tiny…
-
The Moon and Me
She slaps a hard blade of ice white light across my eyes, peeking in from the highest corners of my bedroom windows. “Let me be,” I tell her. “Don’t you know I am old? Of the earliness of babes? How a husband’s lunch won’t pack itself?” “You used to sit with me,” she says. “You used to sit with me and…
-
Year in Review: My Word for 2022
“Pshhhhhew.” My daughter’s tiny hand soared slowly in front of my face as she mimicked the fireworks she was witnessing for the first time. I watched her, baffled by her absolute lack of fear. She gets that from her father. I wrapped my arms around her a little tighter and closed my eyes, the artillery…
-
Should Everyone Like Your Work?
“YOU!” The stranger shouted at me from across the room. I was standing in a dark, seedy bar off Magazine Street in New Orleans, with stone floors older than some American cities, the slick grease of a thousand good nights under my stilettos. “Me?” I pointed at myself; my other hand busy keeping my ballgown…
-
My Top 5 Books for Any Aspiring Writer
photo credit @1924usWhile the writing world is divided on prefaces, I’m going to start with one. Mostly to say that when it comes to writing, the best thing to do is to write. “How-To” books, in-person seminars, online courses, critique groups, and even brainstorming walks to the ice cream shop all serve as a means…
-
What Grey Clouds Can do to a Routine
“Motherf*%$er.” I mumble under my breath. I hear my one and a half year old daughter give the word her best try from her car seat behind me. “Dammit, Collette,” I think, careful to keep this one to myself. I’ve just pulled into the gym parking lot, only to realize I’ve forgotten to move the…
-
To the Gen Zer in Seat 31D
I have never been to Knoxville until now. Or, I should say, 10p.m. last night. Rocketing through the storm soaked atmosphere of Tennessee at 500mph on a 787. The turbulence was batting us around like the little silver balls in the pinball machines of my grandmother’s basement we used to abuse as children. We’d slam…
-
When the Work Might be BAD bad.
My mother has finished reading my novel. She is the first person to read the whole shebang. Of course she is: these are the kinds of things only mothers can be counted on to do (just ask Gustave Flaubert). What’s Lizzie’s great line? “I am half agony, half hope.” That’s me. It’s a first draft,…
THE CARTRIDGE 