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Memory of Payton in Four Fragments
I. Bull’s Eye Aunt Dinny and Mother walked ahead, their white shirts lit by the evening sun, with Cousin Payton and me behind them. He and I walked side-by-side because Aunt Dinny said Payton and I should be friends. The dirt road behind my grandmother’s house was straight, running east to west, with woods on Read more
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Perfectionism: A Coin Toss
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2000, Martha Stewart described herself as a “maniacal perfectionist.” You remember Martha Stewart, right? A woman whose career has spanned six decades. A woman who turned a Connecticut-based catering business into a billion-dollar corporation. Someone who has cultivated publicity-provoking friendships with a wide cast of famous characters: Donald Read more
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Martha Redux
David and I spend most of our evenings together in our new home. A pair of later-life newlyweds, we devote the time to bringing our two, already-full lives together and merging them into one new shared life. At the end of each day, we come together for bits of conversation, the luxury of comfortable silences, Read more
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Finally, an Understandable Definition of “Voice” in Nonfiction
Have you ever noticed how writing experts tend to trip and fumble when they try to explain the concept of voice in nonfiction? They may say that voice is that undefinable something that makes your writing your own. It’s the magic on the page that allows readers to recognize you, the speaker of the text, Read more
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Caroline Kirkland: My Pioneer Sister?
Mudholes complicated travel on the frontier beyond Detroit. In 1836, in a wagon loaded with household goods and six children, Caroline Kirkland and her husband William lumbered toward the tract of land they had purchased on speculation. They planned to make a new home, and hopefully a handsome profit, in the West. They had already Read more
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Who Would I Encounter in a Psychomanteum?
I sit on a low chair in a small, dimly lit room. A candle burns behind me. In front of me stands a long rectangular mirror. I am seated at an angle to the mirror so that I don’t see my own image. As I’ve been instructed to do, I think about family members who Read more
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
If so, this blog is for you.
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