Marion Agnew

A writer friend recently read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird . She's also doing Morning Pages from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way . Another writer-friend is recruiting "bunkmates" for Camp NaNoWriMo, which is apparently the summer version of NaNoWriMo. She suggested creating your own project--not necessarily drafting a new work, which is (as I understand it) the function of NaNoWriMo, but perhaps editing or submitting or researching or something else--intensely, for 31 days. Others are creating schedules and valiantly attempting to stick to them, even though summer is here, with all the summer things--like WARMTH and SUNSHINE and GELATO and STROLLS. (And for me, bug spray.) For many who work in a teaching capacity, summer feels like "found time," and their fear is that late August will bring despairing moments of "whaaaaaaaat haaaaaaaappened to aaaaaaaallll that tiiiiime?" (Flashbacks to childhood feels. Though I also liked school a lot.)...

I was recently at the Creative Nonfiction Collective's conference. Here are some of my favourite moments from the trip. Enjoy. Why my novel has been "cut" from 90K words to 94K words a time or two. On a medical building. Love art like this. Didn't buy it. Really wanted to.

I'm traveling this weekend, therefore, Spring is springing and I am reluctant to leave. Here's what I'll return to: I'll enjoy being with other folks writing creative nonfiction. By my oh my, it will be great to come home again.

Over on her blog, Transactions with Beauty, writer Shawna Lemay posed an interesting question recently: "What words would you most like to get tattooed indelibly on your skin?" She has a whole list. (She's also in the middle of a Springsteen phase, and she takes lovely photographs.) It's tough to say. One reason I haven't seriously considered a tattoo is that words change meaning for me over time. I don't know that a word I wanted and needed to see daily at 30 (integrity) would be something I'd want or need to see daily lo these several decades later. However. Shawna's right; it's a fun exercise. At the moment, I'm toying with this: "It is a truth universally acknowledged." Yes, it's the opening to Pride and Prejudice . Perhaps mentioning Jane Austen on the blog linked above primed the pump. But the quote also says something about writing and the writer, I think. We worry a lot about whether "it's been done al...

So. Some days, your back hurts. Some days, it's not your back that hurts, but the hurting back still hurts you. Some days, your back stretches tall and you feel invincible. Some days, you stand and walk and bend over and your back feels okay. Some days, you can only hang on, hoping for a stretch of sunny days to make you feel foolish for taking a jacket. Some days are all about waiting, but not passively--resting while you wait, readying yourself to grow again. Like this. Some days are for blooming.

Agave plants bloom once, late in their lifetimes, and it's pretty dramatic--a tall (ten- to twenty-foot or even taller) spike shoots up quickly over the course of a few weeks, then sprouts flowers. (This is not a technical, botanically correct description.) After it blooms--which can take 10 years, or 20--the plant dies. (Don't fret. It has left behind little plants. For a longer version of this story, see Charlotte's Web . Or Little Shop of Horrors .) A friend in Tucson has been monitoring a blooming plant since early April, posting updates on Instagram. It looked like variations on an asparagus stalk crossed with a Dr. Seuss illustration of a plant ready to open buds. Just a few more days, maybe, until it flowers. Yesterday, he posted a picture of it lying across the road--high winds uprooted it. Imagine, all that time put in to maturing, then working so hard to bloom. Then taken out before the work pays off. A LITTLE ON THE NOSE THERE WITH THAT "LESSON,...

I've been home for a week or so, but part of me still feels as if I'm traveling. That is to say, I'm still in the triage stage of return--what bills must be paid today, what else must be done for today's deadlines, what food do we absolutely need for today. Meanwhile, some students and teachers are nearing the ends of their terms. As a result, or maybe it's coincidence, I've found some good advice out there lately. Wrap-up thoughts, if you will. A message to leave with people as they move ahead into the rest of their lives.  One of my favorite online advice-givers is Lee Martin, a writer of novels and memoirs who also teaches in Ohio. Here is a recent blog post, Ten Precepts for the Writing Life . And here is my favorite precept (today): "Write because you know you'd be less human if you stopped." And, if you are at a point in your writing life where you wonder what's next, or if you are venturing beyond the structure of a classroom,...