Moving Day
Well, Moving Day was eventful. I decided I’d take care of the “little stuff” myself and leave only the big furniture for the professional guys. My sorting, organizing, and purging project started off...
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Book of the Month: This Life Is In Your Hands
This Life Is In Your Hands As much as I love memoir–and I do love it–sometimes I’m ready for the book to end. Memoir is hard to wrap up because it’s life. And even when a writer shares a lesson she’s...
View ArticleColorado Adventure
Three days after we moved (from Virginia to Virginia), I woke up and said, “Get me outta here.” The power was still out. It was still 100+ degrees and unbearably muggy. But it just so happened that we...
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Welcome September
It’s still muggy in D.C., but with autumn around the corner the weather will break any day. Speaking of breaks, Roughly Speaking has been on summer break. Here’s what’s new: Leo Went Camping: To...
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This Book Belongs to You
A few months ago, I bought a This Book Belongs To: _____ stamp. It’s a wise owl perched next to an open book with a pair of spectacles resting on the pages. I spent hours one afternoon at the Colorado...
View ArticleHappy Thanksgiving
Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the...
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Faith and Writing
I took a bubble bath the other day. While I soaked, I cracked open the book Every Good Endeavor by Timothy Keller with Katherine Leary Alsdorf. It’s about vocation. Whether writing, law, medicine,...
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Buckeyes
I’m not much of a baker (or a butcher or a candlestick maker or any type of a domestic person at all, really…), but I do make cookies once a year:* Christmas cookies! Specifically, Buckeyes. These are...
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To Read Anew
Do you ever reread books? There are three or four books I reread over and over from start to finish, but typically I only reread certain passages from my favorite books, or flip through the pages and...
View ArticleProverbs for Writers
If you could once make up your mind in the fear of God never to undertake more work of any sort than you can carry on calmly, quietly, without hurry or flurry, and the instant you feel yourself growing...
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Extra Special Books
It is such a treat to read a book written by someone you know. This past weekend I read (more like inhaled) Wil of God by Carrie Wilson Link. Carrie and I met at a writing workshop years ago. She has...
View ArticlePersonal Essays
It’s that time again. My updated guide to Personal Essay Markets is online over at mediabistro. Thank you to all the wonderful editors who gave me the inside scoop on topics, length, pay, submission...
View ArticleGood Friday
Measure thy life by loss instead of gain; Not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth; For love’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifice; And whoso suffers most hath most to give. -Ugo Bassi,...
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Israel
There is a passage in the Bible where Jesus wept for the city of Jerusalem. Near the end of his ministry, Jesus rode a colt as he descended the Mount of Olives. The crowds cheered joyfully, yet Jesus...
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Firm Roots
Here’s Ron on the bedrock in Nazareth. The same bedrock that was in Nazareth 2,000 years ago when Jesus lived and (maybe) the same bedrock Jesus climbed and ran and scrambled on with his Nazarene...
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Writing Spaces
“I had no idea how much I love limestone,” I said to Ron over and over as we walked around Israel. “Me, too,” he said. “I love its look, its texture, and its smell,” I said. The sandstone color lit up...
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What I’ve Been Reading
Awful title, but wonderful book. It’s about a girl living in South America who was abducted and then abandoned in a forest. She learned to survive by imitating the actions of capuchin monkeys (she ate...
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Kicking in the Wall
I hit a wall. I’m hard at work on a book, and the other day I told Ron: “I might have just wasted the last three years of my life.” At times it feels like I’ll never reach the end. My writing...
View Article5 Moment Memoir
I love to read journals by other writers. Anne Frank, Sylvia Plath, Laurel Lee, Phyllis Theroux, and Martha Manning are a few published ones I can think of off the top of my head. I also like books...
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Summer Solstice
I burst out of the prop plane and stepped onto the tarmac at the small airport in southwest Colorado. After a wet and gloomy June in D.C. (double the amount of rainfall than usual), I enjoyed a truly...
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