I read a lot of memoirs. I read a lot of memoirs about people with diseases. But when I read Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad, I was still surprised that I was reading so much about a woman’s journey through cancer and not more about her actual journey after cancer.
Although 2020 has kept me away from loved ones more than usual, as a self-proclaimed writer, I still get the same question no matter how long it has been when I see one of my fans.
A little more than a week away from Christmas, it finally hit. The spirit. I propelled me as I drove from store to store looking for a tiny tree that I could place in my living room. I bought one of the half-sized trees last year when the fake tree I had seemed too much of a hassle and just too ugly to put up.
I recently had a chance to review What’s the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing by Melissa Donovan. I know it sounds like hyperbole to say that this book has everything you need to know about writing, but it really covers a lot.
They say denial ain’t just a river, but 2020 has been flooded with it. From COVID debunkers to a president who won’t concede the election, 2020 is the crazy man at the podium who refuses to admit his hair dye is running down his temple.
When I was a kid, I loved Pippi Longstocking. I remember her being a bit eccentric and unconventional, but what I loved most about her was that she had red hair like me. I had no idea that these books were thirty years old when I was reading them, or that they were written by a Swedish woman, Astrid Lindgren, who was ever bit as unorthodox for her time as the character she created.
Is the pandemic a blip on the radar? Or will it have long-term lasting effects on the way we live? At a time when we can’t seem to agree on anything, it’s no surprise that we’re divided on predictions of how it will all pan out.
I haven’t been around here for a while. I’ve been busy doing this and that, and sometimes not much at all. But when a writer gets a gift, they have to take it. Today, I received one in the form of a writing prompt.
Did you know it has been 20 years since the decade of the brain? The Decade of the Brain, from 1990 – 1999, was an initiative by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health “to enhance public awareness of the benefits to be derived from brain research.”
I started reading The Opposite of Certainty, a memoir by Janine Urbaniak Reid, because it’s another story about someone with a brain tumor. This time it was the author’s young son. I’m an astrocytoma survivor and I think I’ve read every book there is on brain tumors trying to find myself in the story. Even as I tried, I never quite found the same story, until now.
