My students often talk about facing the blank page and not knowing what to say, not “feeling it.” I go on and on about how I make myself write for an hour, no matter what (and that’s qualified by days where chaos intervenes, and the weekends where mom doesn’t even try to write). Today I’ll give specifics about why and why and why. I could imagine not writing today. I’m in chronic pain and in a phase of “off meds” for rheumatoid arthritis.

 

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Okay, I'm going to be honest about a tough thing... not the toughest thing ever in my life, but the current challenge: rheumatoid arthritis. It came on last summer after my thyroid swelled up and shut down. Thank god my mom had the same thing happen to her at the same time; she provided the road map. The backdrop is a thousand well-meaning people advising me to swim and do yoga, not understanding that this condition is an incurable autoimmune disease.

 

And here's the part that…

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I take on political topics in my writing--labor activism in Opa Nobody, the need for universal healthcare in Cover Me--but like many writers on She Writes, I start with my own life because that's the subject I know best. A long time ago, when I was working as a cashier and receptionist at a photo processing…

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I'm finishing up the second read-through of my forthcoming memoir, Cover Me. It's a strange experience, this compressed re-living of large chunks of one's life after having had a break from this book for a few months. This one is easier to proof than Opa Nobody, but I'm am surprised as I was last time by how much anxiety this causes. Feels like being 9 months pregnant, hoping it's good, hoping I haven't been too finicky with my semi-colons. :)