Category: Writing
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Mother.
As the day comes to a close, I watch the clouds settle in over the mountains and I can’t help but think how everything about them speaks Mother: Soft, pink, and all-encompassing. Able to drape her soft body around even the mightiest masterpieces until all is shrouded in the delicate mist of her touch. She…
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Where Words are Born
I want dark frayed linen and mismatched china on the windowsill. Woolen socks drying on the line in early morning, meandering fog and dried nailed lavender above the sink. I want stone hues, silk scarves that always seem to stay put, and the slow drip of a copper faucet. People walking bikes along the path…
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Only and Everything.
It is August of two thousand twenty one. I am rocking my daughter to sleep, listening to the sound of uninterrupted life that comes from our company on the other side of the door. Good, hearty laughter, the ringing of wine glasses, and the passing of bread. I count the seconds until she is asleep…
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No, Artists Don’t Have a Creative “Sixth-Sense.”
When my daughter was a newborn, I’d wake up in the middle of the night just a few moments before she would. From perfect sleep, my eyes would flicker open to the dark silence of a still room. Then, after a minute or two, my daughter’s little body would sidle back and forth, and she’d…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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 