When I was seventeen, I was told to hunker down. I was in an acting class and had just spent about fifteen minutes improvising a scene played out on a tightrope between the life I was living and the one I’d just created for my character. Real Life Improv - that’s what my teacher called …
I misinterpreted most things by choice at seventeen; I couldn’t define good riddance; I chose not to know the difference between stay and go, but played the victim like a champion. You should know we’re fine, and you should know things got worse. In my college essay I wrote about accepting loneliness, leaving out what …
It was 2014, after dinner but before Thanksgiving when I sawed off the head of a deer. We were in the back shed surrounded by the thick scent of fresh death, and I was just a guest, an outsider when it comes to survival. “This should get us through winter,” the father said to his …
By late August, we'd exhausted our summer nights with the sort of innocuous chatter that in hindsight can only be defined as endless foreplay - coyly beating around the inevitable. Chris would park his car outside my house, just barely seventeen, a shiny license tucked into the wallet kept safely in one of the deep …
Many successful writers have contributed to advice books, advice blogs, advice twitter accounts, sharing their Expert advice on writing. And so many of them say: tell the truth. That’s it. Whether it’s fiction or otherwise, tell the truth. And I say to myself okay, I can do that. I took classes on how to tell …
As a human destined to forever be under five feet, a fear of heights is a trait I made sure never to possess. As a child, if there was something I couldn't reach, which happened fairly often, I'd climb. I climbed kitchen countertops to get cups and plates; I climbed the shelves in my closet …
Continue reading "Your Favorite Piece of Playground Equipment"
I’m not a cigarette smoker, though I’ve dabbled. I’m not much of a junk food eater, but I love a good dessert, and I follow a few TV shows but I’m really not one to binge. But okay, I’ll admit it - I do procrastinate when it comes to the boring topics, pick at my …
Continue reading "Describe One of Your Bad Habits and Why You Secretly Get Joy Out of It."
