My apologies for not saying hello,
Catching you up on things that are distracting me from writing: I did a three day conference for nonprofit leadership in Rochester this week; it was full of joy and inspiring talks and roundtables, but no autumn leaves - the trees were tinged with dry brown and not lush colors.
Troubling.
Conferences send you home with a suitcase full of colorful sticky notes and going through them all is a daunting task - nothing seems quite as actionable as it did in your tidy hotel room without laundry or college financial aid forms or piles of dishes or insurance forms or a fish tank to clean.
Wouldn’t it be amazing to just walk away from the paperwork of life and live in a hotel room for the next ten years? But the paperwork doesn’t go away, even if you burn the house down behind you.
Writing News:
I’m doing a reading at the Brooklyn Book Festival! It’s a Bookends event, at the Books Are Magic Bookstore on Montague Street (there are two locations). Your ticket buys a book, and I’m on a roster with some incredible talent (five other readers, all of us have been published by Mutha Magazine) - I’m also representing Pen Parentis and co-hosting the event. Editor in Chief Meg Lemke has been a great friend of Pen Parentis for years and we are thrilled to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the online magazine together. Friday September 29, 7pm. Get tickets here.
I’ll be reading from A FLASH OF DARKNESS. (Deesha Philyaw will be reading from her soon-to-be-on-HBO story collection The Secret Lives of Church Ladies; you might want to come just for that!)
I have to say, it has been so cool to have friends pull my book out of their bag and tell me which story they like best.
I thought that was going to be all the writing news this week, but people!!
I GOT PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES TODAY!
Random Final Thought:
I think maybe there are sharers and there are hoarders. Hoarders are happiest when they have their own stuff, and perhaps their grounding principle is having full control. Meanwhile, sharers are only truly happy when others are appreciating their stuff (“stuff” being anything from talent to trinkets.) I wonder if this is connected to introvert/extrovert or not. Anyone know of any studies about sharing vs hoarding?
Not sure what our grounding principle is, but I’m definitely a sharer. Which are you?
you're amazing!