What I learned this week
Sometimes, surprise yourself.
Similar Posts
How a Book Is Born, Part 7
In which the plan is made. Now, 50,000 words in a month is a lot of words, especially when you’re working them in around the day job and the kid and the etc. So it’s important to have a way to measure progress. You can write 50,000 words in a month. What you can’t do…
On not climbing mountains
When she learned that Dojo Wisdom was going to be reprinted, my colleague (and friend!) Polly Campbell asked me to write a guest post on her blog, Imperfect Spirituality. It appeared a few weeks ago, and I wanted to repost it here for readers who may not have had a chance to see it at…
On how to make a grimoire
Some people have asked about my post on why I have a grimoire, wanting to know a little more about what goes into it. First, you do not have to have a totally awesome dragon-embossed tome. You can use almost anything with a cover (or you could use a computer file but how boring is…
Building houses
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how life can make you question everything you believe. I quoted Rebecca, a reader who said, “With the initial wound of the TSC [tuberous sclerosis complex] diagnosis still fresh for us, I have shied away from examining any belief. Because, frankly, anything I have ever believed about this…
Ode to the coffee shop
One of the baristas at the coffee shop I frequent is an extremely taciturn and dignified young man, and when he asks if I want sprinkles, he uses a carefully modulated and uninflected tone so as not to make his pain too apparent. Sometimes he draws a little leaf on my mocha. The stories I…
On alternative realities
A while back I was reading Christopher de Hamel’s Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, and for a time I was twenty-five again, heart, mind, body, soul, remembering my joy on first seeing an illuminated manuscript in the Morgan Library in NYC, a trip I took as a graduate student to attend a humanities conference. The first…