My partner and I were talking the other day about how we form thoughts, and I mentioned that my thoughts are not images or sounds or sentences, but are words that I feel in my mouth. I don’t visualize writing in my mind’s eye…because I don’t have a mind’s eye. And so anything I thinkContinue reading “Drafts and daydreams”
Tag Archives: writer’s life
Support me through May 30/30 with Tupelo Press!
During the month of May, I’m writing poems for Tupelo Press’s 30/30 challenge!
In the middle of reading
It is, obviously, good practice to wait to write a review of a book until after you’ve read it. Waiting to review a book until after you’ve read it means that you’ve given the book a fair shot. You’re able to speak intelligently about the work as a whole. You avoid cherry picking information fromContinue reading “In the middle of reading”
How I wrote, and how I am writing
I’m writing this post from Montréal. In the lead-up traveling earlier this week, I didn’t have time to write a blog post, which broke my regular posting streak. That’s okay, though: traveling has actually given me a chance to think more about what I wanted to write this week, which was a little reflection onContinue reading “How I wrote, and how I am writing”
Pushed Output
Lately, I have been trying to write a few sentences each morning—a paragraph, if we’re being generous—in French to practice reading and writing in the language. My attempts are slow, messy, and probably grammatically incorrect, and my vocabulary couldn’t possibly be more sophisticated than an elementary school child’s vocabulary. I have not refreshed my memoryContinue reading “Pushed Output”
Post-AWP thoughts
The last time I attended AWP1 was in 2020, the ill-fated San Antonio year. At the time, I decided that that experience was all I would need of this particular writing conference. It was a weird year, small because so many people had decided not to attend (since AWP had not made the decision forContinue reading “Post-AWP thoughts”
“Remember Professional Ethics”
For the past few months, whenever I’ve started writing in a new notebook (a simple spiral-bound, college-ruled notebook; I am a broke grad student and my usual notebook indulgences must be curbed), I’ve written one of Timothy Snyder’s lessons from On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century on the cover. Just yesterday I filledContinue reading ““Remember Professional Ethics””
(Re-)reading in context
For my PhD program, we have two choices of qualifying exam to reach candidacy: the written exam option (basically, a timed essay in response to a set of questions set by the committee), or the portfolio option (two collections of work based on two reading lists, which can then be the foundation for a dissertationContinue reading “(Re-)reading in context”
“Encore une fois”
As I make my way through grad school, I keep having moments when I suddenly understand what my past teachers were doing in the classroom. As a student, I had a vague idea that I understood when someone was a “good” teacher and when they were a “bad” one. The middle school social studies teacherContinue reading ““Encore une fois””
Ten years after my first story
Yesterday, I was talking to a class about the process of revision after having read Joy Williams’s “Uncanny Singing That Comes from Certain Husks.” I haven’t read very much Joy Williams (I was substituting for a fellow PhD student’s Beginning Creative Writing class, which is how I encountered this essay), but as much as IContinue reading “Ten years after my first story”
Caroliena Cabada 