While I was working on my MFA I had to share feedback with fellow students and mentors. That is, of course, a huge part of the program. I generally feel ambivalent about it. When I feel people haven’t understood what I meant I struggle to slow myself down and listen carefully to their comments. It ranges from difficult to exhausting. […]
It’s roughly a month and a half now till I start the MFA program at Goucher. The program formally starts with the on-campus residency. I think I’m ready, although I still have a fair amount of reading to do before I feel like my brain will be full of enough literary journalism, memoir, biography, autobiography, crime writing, and general “true […]
I have mentioned in earlier posts that I am working on an essay for Creative Nonfiction’s “Southern Sin” issue, and that I came up with a great story idea. The story relies on two street preachers, who unfortunately have not yet agreed to speak with me. The story isn’t important just because it will be beneficial for me to tell […]
The more I explore personal essays, the more I fear using the present tense that is a hallmark of many essays. I sit by the bank of the river. The birds call to me, come swim, jump in. I want to tell them the water is too cold. They mock me and I feel tears start. This is the day […]
It’s been almost eight months since I ventured back into freelance journalism, and I have to believe that it’s what I was meant to do. Not in a la-la I wanna be Anne Sexton when I grow up kind of way, but based on how things have been going, the things God has sent my way and those He hasn’t. […]
