Category: life

Summer hit with a flurry of travel, and it’s been difficult to get back into the groove of things now that I’m home.

I could rattle off several anxious reasons why my writing projects sit unattended, but instead I’m letting it go and holding on to the what Jane Hammons shared in her guest post recently, that breaks from writing don’t have to be worrisome.

Sometimes they are necessary and sometimes, as she says, these breaks can function as a creative boost and be just the distraction we need to get back into writing: “as long as I’m moving forward and not settling into [dread or self-loathing or ennui], I’m okay.”

So I write a little.

Excerpts from my day, tiny essays about up north, musings about what the fish must think as we troll across the water in an old pontoon boat with “Foxy Lady” streaming from the speakers. A sound more luring, perhaps, than the glint of a fake minnow that pulls through the water on the end of fishing line.

And I catch up on reading.

Though even my attention here is divided. My nightstand is full of books in play: Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, David Arnold’s Mosquitoland, and a book of poems in Anishinaabemowin and English, called Weweni, by Margaret Noodin. Plus, I just downloaded the new Brevity Magazine app, which displays all its recent posts in a cool, easy to browse format.

Then, sometimes, I draw and doodle.

Taking inspiration however it comes.

“I like my coffee with cream and my literature with optimism.”
~ Abigail Reynolds

What are you writing, reading, or doodling these days?