After catching up with family and friends in Michigan, Denver, and Montana, I’m back in Princeton, trying to find my groove. A literary lecture helps.
Category: Writing
Best of 2019
My husband, inspired by Benjamin Franklin, tracks metrics about his life performance. Everyday, he records whether or not he accomplished certain goals, like drinking fewer than x number of alcoholic drinks, exercising, meditating, and much, much more. He’s been tracking all this DAILY for more than a decade. I’m much less of a tracker. Mostly […]
Notre Dame, Mark Twain, and How Old Buildings Connect Us
I’ve been reading Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad, which is a travelogue that recounts a grand voyage by sea and land that Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain embarked upon with some super rich Americans in 1868. The writing is wonderful and Mark Twain is an absolute hoot. I’ve laughed out loud on almost every page. And, as you might […]
Do I Need to be Locked in a Book-Filled Glass Cage in Order to Write?
(Warning: Major spoilers below for the television show You). In the Netflix show “You” an obsessive serial killer boyfriend locks his procrastinating writer girlfriend in a glass cage located in the the basement of a quaint New York City bookshop. He has to keep her prisoner there because she discovered all his murderous deeds, […]
200 Posts Later
Several blog posts ago marked my 200th post, yay! And while no one really liked those montages that sitcoms from the 90s would air when they hit the 100-episode mark, I didn’t want the occasion to go unmarked, so humor me as I present a wee little blogtage. I’ve been writing this blog since 2012, […]
The Best Job I Ever Had
My interview at the Kalamazoo Gazette was terrifying. All the editors sat around a table and role played that a terrible thing had just occurred and a shell-shocked school bus driver was the sole witness. Twenty-year-old Emily, who had just finished her sophomore year at Western Michigan University, was supposed to play the role of […]
A French Writing Retreat
I have just returned from a writing retreat on a mountaintop in France. Let me just let that one sink in, so you have a chance to be like “ooh lah lah, someone think she fancy.” But, there it is. After getting a writing degree that required twice a year stays in Paris, I just […]
Nothing a Literary Lecture Won’t Fix
A little more than a year ago, I was feeling out of sorts and depressed. Trying to make a life in Jerusalem, write my book, and even just fill my days felt like a struggle. Once, I burst into tears in my Arabic class and my teacher took my outside and was like “What is […]
New Year Goal: Stop Being So Lazy
When I was 28 and had just quit my job as a journalist, got married, and moved to Yemen, I wrote a blog post in which I vowed to never stop with my creative pursuits, and to always live a life of passion. Four years later is probably a good time to revisit my wide-eyed […]
Is an MFA in Creative Writing Worth It?
A final trip to Paris last month marked the end of my dream graduate school experience. Now, I just need to find a spot to hang my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree from New York University. And finish my book. Oh, and start paying off my student loans, which are substantial. And so, now […]