Tomorrow night I leave for Boston — two days walking around where Nathaniel Hawthorne once walked — and ten days at the Gell Center in upper state New York. Scary! I worry about my daughters. Aren’t I completely crucial to their well-being? How will they survive without me? I worry about my students. Yes, I’ll […]
I have been gifted this quarter with students who argue with me. Try writing every day, I suggest. “I can’t do that,” they say. Try using a little dialogue, let us hear this character’s voice, I suggest. “I never remember what people say.” I felt confused by this sentence, I tell them in workshop. “I […]
Despite a sleepless night (couldn’t stop coughing), I decided I had to go to class today. Standing in the kitchen with my cold meds in my hand I said aloud, “If I take these I won’t be able to think straight in class. If I don’t take these, I’ll spread my germs to everyone.” One […]
“Intimacy is anarchic and mutual and definitionally incompatible with control.” Jonathan Franzen I’m sick, sick enough that I felt justified in calling in sick to the college and going back to bed. I thought I would get up at ten or eleven and work on-line. Instead I slept nearly all day. But I also did […]