Photo by Pat Graziosi on Unsplash I started feeling competitive and it wasn’t helping. Feeling that edge every now and then can be good motivational fuel. But the edge was becoming the whole cloth. The fibers didn’t feel right. I knew too much about my own traits, motivations, and the science behind them. Twenty-plus years of […]
Category: Writing
Photo by Amy Ross on flickr I majored in journalism because it was the Seventies. My mother had a radio show at WSOY in Decatur, IL. I thought AM radio was corny, but I was secretly proud of her. To fill an hour of empty air with nothing but a microphone seemed insanely brave. Print journalism […]
Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash Should you keep trying? Between the facts of shared DNA, cultural expectations, and the ecstatic families portrayed on social media lies a fiction. It goes something like this: Being related means that we can relate to family members in ways we can’t with those outside the family. Although we know […]
Photo by Cristi Tohatan on Unsplash Allies have had some bad press. More than five years ago, Black Girl Dangerous Mia McKenzie wrote that she was over the term ally, ‘the constant cookie-seeking of people who just can’t do the right thing unless they are sure they’re gonna get some kind of credit for it.’ I […]
Photo by Stanislav Kondratiev on Upsplash Just before Christmas, I asked a friend if she could push our lunch back 30 minutes so I could finish writing some recommendation letters. Over lunch, we talked about how we imagine “boundaries” of work, volunteering, family and personal life. Less a bitch-and-moan session than trying to figure it out. […]
Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash Resolutions have a dismal success rate: a quarter fail by mid-January and less than 10 percent are deemed successful by year’s end. The problem isn’t that we’re lazy or that winter is a lousy time to punish ourselves (although getting up at 6 a.m. to run in 20-degree weather isn’t […]
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This Is How I Do It
Gary Powell, author of Speedos, Tattoos, and Felons and Lucky Bastard, recently tagged me in a blog about his writing process. I’m happy to participate. Although every writer’s process is different, I always get some insight from an author who’s willing to share what works for her or him. Plus, Gary Powell rocks! Now I’m tagging […]
Last year I started a social media event called “14 words for one love” where I asked my Facebook friends to post 14-word poems or aphorisms about community love in order to give them away on Valentine’s Day. My goal was 1400 poems but secretly I hoped to collect more like 140. The day before […]
In 14 flash fiction chapters, Santa goes off on a reality TV celeb and is swiftly incarcerated while political, social and supernatural forces conspire to cancel Christmas. Two brilliant women–a Russian hacker and a Moroccan pastry chef–enlist The Legion of Doom to free Santa. But not before Joker and the KGB attempt one last deal. […]
Jodi Barnes 