writing

  • 24 moments that shaped my life  Some day I hope to write about these things, if I haven’t already. 1. The moment she whispered in my ear 2. The moment I heard the gunshot 3. The moment the phone rang at 3 a.m. 4. The moment the nurse tried to leave with my newborn son

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  • The road map of my life I’m told it began in California and from my earliest memory that’s been the case. Happiness blossomed for me in California. I liked everything as a child and I quickly became a pop culture fanatic, devouring everything from the Six-Million-Dollar Man to standing in line for the 1989 premier

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  • Damn you, Aquaman There is a kind of hunger for free time. Real free time. Without the damn dishes, the weekend laundry, or any chores whatsoever, without feeling pressured to write by my own OCD mind and just read any of the books I feel like reading, or paint. Or write. Or all of the

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  • Shove it in with a shovel-spoon One bag of macaroni shells A stick of butter A block of orange (radioactive orange) cheese THESE are the things that subdued my anger, my sense of indignation at the world, and put an end to my whining to this very day. These three things my mom combined when it

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  • Because pee

    The line at this particular bathroom killed her. She hated lines like she hated obscurity. But she had to go. Bad. Justine was a pretty little thing. She’d just cut her long blonde hair off a week ago, going for a tomboy style she found charming. The men in her life weren’t so sure about

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  • Nog and sap Anticipation in the house was almost palpable at Christmas time. Decorations, the large real tree, the Burl Ives and Bing Crosby holiday records; these were all lugged out of the big blue storage trunk the first week of December. Back then Thanksgiving actually included decorations that kept the event separate from Christmas.

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  • Get a group of writers together and you never know what might happen. The term “herding cats” springs to mind. But the term “universe of awesome” also comes up in my head. There are so many different types of people who write, from those who think they’re the next Douglas Adams to those who think

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  • sunshine and gulls It’s skies are crawling with gulls. They sit on every streetlight – along Fremont and up the city’s spine, Broadway (now also called Obama Way). For Seaside, tucked nicely between Fort Ord and Monterey, it’s a fitting new name. I kissed a girl for the first time at Martin Luther King Middle

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  • Writing in curmudgeon

    JD Salinger almost nailed it. He didn’t like art on the covers of his books. It took away from the tale by creating what might be a false sense of the story inside, by telling the reader (by default) what they should see in their heads when they crack the spine. Even his name confused

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