*Nice pretends to be a virtue, but kindness actually is.* “I was just trying to be nice.” “I just wanted to be nice.” “Not nice,” I say to the toddler after he bludgeons his sister with a random toy, “NOT NICE.” I find myself thinking about “nice” a lot lately, often before recounting a story […]
The Problem With Nice Read More
*Sometimes, a beginning feels like an ending at first.* When I left academia, I kind of thought my life was over as a scholar, a teacher, a researcher & a writer. More than thought it, I felt it. In my marrow and sinew, in my flesh and heart. My life as I knew it was
The End Was Not the End Read More
*The academy has a gender problem. And it’s not new.* So, Sexism Ed has been out for 28 days. (Who’s counting? I am clearly.) And there are few things that I want to direct your attention to. First, The Revealer published an excerpt recently, which is one of my favorite essays on all the men who pretend
*Assuming “everything is fine” ignores the pain and grief in my story.* It happened again a few weeks ago. Someone, who hadn’t read Grace Period, asked me about my transition out of the academy. I gave the short version because the book is the long version. They considered me thoughtfully for a moment and broke into
*You forget how much of you is in the book. You forget your investment.* Your book was published this week. Something you created made it out into the world, and your creative work with it is finished. (Book promotion is a different story.) There’s nothing more to write for this particular book, which makes you
Things you forget about making a book Read More
*I’m doing all of the parts of the business of being a writer that I don’t really like.* I’ve been seriously grumpy lately. There are many reasons for my grumpiness, but one of the main culprits is that I haven’t been writing as much as I want to. Yes, I write a column and articles