The day my mother died, it was the sound of her not-breathing that most struck me. With each breath, her chest rose, air moving through her throat, raspy, painful, like wind through wooden blinds. So much work. The air gargled its way out of her lungs through the mouth she could no longer close. Then, silence. Continue reading →

The prompt: From imagination or memory or both, write about something you or a character has given up. I encourage writers to use the prompt in whatever way they would like, and I allow myself that latitude, too. What follows is just as I wrote it during a workshop. Continue reading →

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a prompt based on George Ella Lyon’s poem, “Where I’m From,” in which I invited writers to begin their writing with the words “I am from….” As an alternative, I suggested beginning with “Where I come from…” instead. Someone muttered, “Same thing,” but really, it’s not. There’s a slight attitudinal shift in the second opening, and like travelers who start with their shoulders touching but bodies and feet slightly angled away from each other, the journey can be completely different. Continue reading →