Grace and I had bunk beds. They were bought second-hand. I’m not sure if it was a garage sale or an ad in the paper. I have a vague memory of visiting a stranger’s house with my dad. The house was white painted wood and tall and right up on Read more
In sixth grade, we were given the assignment to draw a self-portrait and then write six words that described ourselves. It was a lesson on adjectives. I picked “Obnoxious”, “Fat”, “Loquacious”, “Stupid”, “Grotesque”, and “lazy.” I was bitterly proud of my vocabulary. (“Loquacious” was my attempt to be nice to Read more
As a teen, I felt the agony of not fitting in. Advice from my peers didn’t help. “Dress how you want! But not in that!” I wrote many angsty teen poems about the tyrannical conformity of teal and pink penguins. I couldn’t escape ridicule for my clothes. I didn’t have control Read more
Last night I dreamed I was on a generational star ship modeled after a Russian palace. It was in disrepair, abandoned, and it was snowing in parts of it. I will never write this story. Okay, part of that is that it’s just a setting, not a real story idea, Read more
I think that in the future, fanfic will be considered the literature of our age. One of the first things I ever wrote was fanfic, though I didn’t know it at the time. I was in first grade. I wrote a story about Star Trek. (The original series. Next Gen Read more
We were at Aunt Grace’s farm and her sons were playing battle in the snow. I wanted to play, too. They said I could be the princess they fought over. There was an igloo that would be my ‘tower’ and we set icicles in the doorway for bars. One of Read more
I can trace the dawn of my writing career to Cinderella. The Disney movie. I saw it and was blown. Away. I had a perhaps uncomfortably enthusiastic appreciation for Cinderella’s abusive life at the beginning of the film. “The only thing that would make this better,” thought five-year-old me, “is Read more