I’ve always had an active imagination; I was the kid who could be left alone in my room for hours, totally immersed in whatever story I had concocted for my My Little Ponies. But when I went through some trauma in middle school, imagination filled a new role for me. Essentially, it allowed me to cope with a world that didn’t meet many of my needs, in which I didn’t feel like a whole person. There was something so complete and gratifying in the places I went in my imagination that I spent…

This week, the writing exercise from A Year in the Life was to write a letter to a columnist giving “advice” about something you’ve been through.

Since so many people seem preoccupied with finding “the one,” I wrote about how my romantic life blossomed after I’d decided to give up dating “for…

Last night, my dad and my sister presented me with a new guitar they had made as a belated birthday present. My dad did the assembly and staining, and my sister did the woodburned artwork. The photos don’t do it justice, but she took kind of a…

I've got a new post up on Young Adult Catholics, even though it isn't my week to write. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to hold onto the thread all the way until next week. It's an attempt to answer a question I get quite commonly about "why I stay" in a Church in which I won't support many official teachings. The short answer is, "It's complicated." The longer answer is…

“Bikini Bods” for Ten-Year-Olds?

I subscribe to the Help a Reporter Out (HARO) newsletter, which includes daily calls for interview subjects and experts in various areas. Earlier this week, Girls Life put out a call titled,…

Yesterday was my last official day as Teen Services Librarian for the Marshall-Lyon County Library. My heart is sort of breaking over it–I loved that job so much, but it was a two-hour commute, one way, once a week. I’m still processing all of that, and might blog about it more extensively, but for now, I’m working on a new writing “job” to help take my mind off it. I’ve started doing the weekly exercises in Sheila Bender’s…

If I can write two more poems before midnight tomorrow, I will have completed my first successful NaPoWriMo.

In an ideal world where there is always enough time for writing, my fiction would not have had to take such a blow so I could write poetry this month. But the truth is, I haven’t worked on Rapunzel or Rumpled a bit. This would have bothered me more in the past than it does now. After all, I consider my…

I'm writing this from a computer lab at my temporary residence in New York City, where I've landed to work on the Religious Institute's new "faith and sexuality" guidebook on bisexuality and faith. I'm surrounded by what has been called…

Poem #9: Ice and Thunder

It is a time of ice and thunder

the dog cowering in the doorway

brass tacks on the glass

and trees groaning outside.

Love is an action, not a feeling

this is what Jesus taught us

Their power will be out for days

and I crumple up inside

at the thought of opening the door

on…

My latest post is up at Young Adult Catholics, which examines the difference between love as an action and love as a feeling. For context, you might want to read Justin's wonderful post, The Language Gap, or…

So far, I’ve been successful in writing one poem a day for the first week of April (although not all have been successful poems). Here are a few of my first drafts.

Poem #5: Dinosaur Teeth

That summer we were twelve

I didn’t know

that only bubble-gum string

held your family together.

We crossed that hot parking lot

you told me

how you cried, curled up

in a theater seat.

So for twenty years

I feared…

The Girl in Red by Aaron Frisch

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is a strange little book, recasting the story of Little Red Riding Hood in something of…

My latest post, a reflection on rules vs. Jesus, is up on Young Adult Catholics. If that’s not enough Catholic readin’ for you, today and tomorrow, you can also download the…

Last night, I came home from the Easter festivities bearing a headache from too much sugar but still determined to log my last two hours to achieve victory in NaNoEdMo … even though editing was really the last thing in the world I wanted to do.

Still, I was mostly dismayed (but, admittedly, also relieved), when a glitch in the NaNoEdMo site closed the deadline early — meaning that when I tried to log time at 9 pm CDT, I got a message that said,…

As I feared might happen, NaNoEdMo is kicking my butt. Although I'm only slightly behind schedule, finding a "catch-up" time in the near future seems bleak. I was right when I predicted that the requirement of actually putting in the time would make this harder for me than NaNoWriMo, where my ability to write quickly works in my favor. Based on how much I've been able to edit in about 1 1/2 hrs every day (minus…

Well, March is just a little over halfway over, and I’m barely a smidgen over the halfway mark for NaNoEdMo, clocking in this morning at 26.88 hours out of 50.

Despite putting in an hour and a half per day, the edits sometimes feel as if they are happening excruciatingly slowly. I guess that’s to be expected when…

You didn’t think I’d let the Papal Conclave pass by without bringing up women’s ordination, did you? Head over to Young Adult Catholics to read my post Fox News, Women Priests, Black Smoke, and the Whole Self.

Also, US Catholic gave a nice mention to Hungering and Thirsting for Justice…

In last week’s post, I reflected a bit on my roots as a fan-fiction writeras it related to my latest decision to self-publish. As I think further on the type of writing I’m doing now, I realize that the subject matter and impetus hasn’t really changed all that much, either.

Back when I was thirteen, it was Aladdin fan-fiction that…