On Writing for a Living (or How I Didn’t Become a Writer)

Once upon a time, I was a girl who dreamed of becoming a writer—that is, for the purposes of this post, one I will define as someone who does writing as a fulltime profession, or at least has published a book. Since the time I was about 10 y.o., I had been an active campus […]

The Vacancy of Leaving

Do they have a word for the vacancy you feel after leaving? … I dreamed that I was back in a familiar place, which was home to many people I loved. I was aware that I was back only for a visit, not to stay for long. We were having some sort of a party/happy […]

I, Stubborn Dreamer

There’s an anecdote of me as a child, that my mother used to tell me about over and over again. She said that when I was about 5 y.o., she and my father were watching me work on a coloring book. They were instructing me which colors to use (e.g. green for the leaves, blue […]

Those Pages You Will Throw Out

“…And you don’t care about those first three pages; those you will throw out, those you needed to write to get to that fourth page, to get to that one long paragraph that was what you had in mind when you started, only you didn’t know that, couldn’t know that, until you got to it.”—Anne […]

Dreams Revisited: Journal Entries from 15-year-old Me

Dear Journal (August 14, 2005) “Memories, for me, are precious. That’s why I have you, in the first place.”  …  … I started keeping a journal as I was just about to turn 15. Now, nine years later, I flip back to the pages written by that 15-year-old girl, and I am all at once […]