Did you notice it’s hurricane season again? What, with no decorations, or Hallmark cards, or three-day weekends, you missed it? Understandable. As established by the US’s National Hurricane Center (NHC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1st through November. The whole month of November. A full six […]
Respect the Trigger: On Anxiety Attacks Read More »
I have recently had the honor of completing my first stint as an interviewee! I will be a podcast guest on “Writing Your Resilience” with Lisa Cooper Ellison sometime this summer. First, Lisa’s podcast focuses on memoir writing, but her guests range from book coaches to editors to MFA professors as well as amazing authors,
How to Manage Angst of A First Podcast Guestspot Read More »
Why are artists tortured? Not because of the demons that inhabit them. Nor because of the “blocked” times when creativity hides and the demons can’t be exorcised. No, I think artists are tortured (assuming, of course, they all are) simply because they live in perpetual vulnerability. To share one’s vision, one’s magical spark with the
Creating a Monster? How Winning a Personal Essay Contest Encourages Read More »
When we bought Aquatania, her life raft was expired and we purchased another. To decommission the old one, we took it out to a field (we were on the hard) and yanked the line, and RAN while it self-inflated. Eye-opening sitting inside a kiddie pool with a flimsy parachute roof thinking, “Yeah, this’ll save me.
How to Survive Lost at Sea Book Review: ADRIFT Read More »
The season used to last mid-June to the beginning of November. But the last few years, the experts stretched hurricane season an extra six weeks, like an anxiety-inducing taffy pull, from June 1st through November 30th. As I write this post, we sit at the midpoint of what started as a “slightly below average” season,
Trying to Reason with the Hurricane Season Read More »
As I said before, this new writing journey of mine is new but not new. I’ve just never devoted time and worked to hone the craft of writing like I’m doing now. Still, when does one consider themselves a “writer”—when the words hit the page (or, more accurately, the screen)? Or before, when they percolate
When The Dream Comes True Read More »
I think Marsh Harbour is trying to kill me. Once upon a time I came to a Bahamian archipelago called the Abacos, a collection of one main island, Great Abaco, surrounded by neighboring limestone cays outlining the Sea of Abaco like a dot-to-dot puzzle. The capital of this region, Marsh Harbour, sat upon the northeastern
Sick in Paradise: Survive Again and Again Read More »
Whenever I mention I’m working on a memoir, someone inevitably states, “Someday I should write my memoirs…” I’ve heard folks say this and wonder what they’re talking about. How many books do they plan to write? Then I realize, they must mean memories, as in a collection of. I think the term memoirs was (or
I’m Writing A Memoir (not memoirs, just saying) Read More »
Today was chore day: dinghy into town with four loads of laundry, hit the ATM, and provision (fancy boat term for grocery shopping). This last chore turned into a 3-pronged approach: go to cheaper market, then go to fancier market for any items first store didn’t have in stock, but dinghy back over to first
Adventures in Hull Cleaning Read More »
When contemplating starting this blog, I of course had to consider what I’d name it. Not only did I need to think of an apt, memorable, not-too-short/not-too-long for typing.com name, but I also had to see if said name was available as a domain. For a brief moment I was transported to my early 30’s