Christi Killien and her husband, who she refers to as the Bearded One, have been developing what they call a farmlet on their property in Washington State, learning about sustainable living. A fiction writer who suspended story projects for many years, Christi found her interest in writing rekindled from the couple’s ongoing projects on the…
The Yoga of Writing
Personal essayist Brenda Miller is keeping a blog entitled Spa of the Mind, a phrase she borrowed from a chapter in William Powers’ book Hamlet’s Blackberry. By keeping this blog, Brenda is dedicating herself to exploring “the ways we find respite for our weary minds in a connected world.” She wonders how “we find and cultivate inner space…
How to Write (a book) — a wee rant
Sometimes we need to be reminded that being a writer is about writing, first and foremost. As writers, we have to sit down and get our words on the page whether or not anyone has asked us to do so–and most often, not having been asked is the case. We write to find out more…
Dreaming a Job, Defining as Essay
On a writing retreat, I read through a manuscripts-wanted listing in an arts commission newsletter and noticed a magazine asking for short essays by women on work. I thought about my work roles and how I felt about them–mother, teacher, co-owner of my husband’s computer networking business, poet. How I wished that my “job” as…
Letter to a Columnist
I have always been a reader of letters to Ann Landers and other newspaper columnists to whom the public writes. Even after my own children were grown, I continued to read the Sunday column in Parade Magazine, in which teens wrote in about their concerns, and the following week, other teens responded with what they…