I saw Prince in concert for the first time this week. This was a huge deal for me. I have loved Prince since I was a teenager; his sexy, funky music was instrumental in helping me begin to connect with my own sexuality (as you can see in this essay I wrote for Nerve several years ago). Every time a Prince concert toured over the years, I was either too broke or busy to go. When I saw the announcement of a new…

What electrifies me? You! I have been utterly, deeply inspired and moved by the response to my book giveaway. Thank you, everyone, for sharing your passions, for sharing what makes you tick as writers and women, for giving me windows into your lives, into your fiery, electric hearts. I so loved reading about how you are inspired by truth, by connection, by food, by the body, by nature, by…

Every once in a while, a student will come to my office, saying she doesn’t know what to write.

“What gets your heart pumping?” I’ll ask her. “What takes your breath away? What makes the hair on your arms stand up on end?”

And she’ll look up into the air until something dawns upon her, and then a smile (or pained expression) will spread across her face. Her brother’s…

When I was 11 years old, I started a neighborhood newspaper (named, not so imaginatively, Neighborhood News). It was my first foray into self-publishing, if you don’t count the “novel” I wrote when I was eight. That 20 page homage to The Secret Garden (named, not so imaginatively, The Secret World) ended up in my school library, but that was because my teacher had the pages spiral bound within a laminated orange construction paper cover--I wasn’t involved in the publishing part. …

Well, I did it. I finished my NaNoWriMo novel on November 28--50,049 words that add up to a very rough draft of my YA novel, Seed Bombs. It was such a relief to reach the finish line--it reminded me that I am indeed a writer (something that should have been a given in my mind, but after writing so little the last couple of years, part of me couldn’t help but worry that those days were over.) It was also a relief to finish a couple of days early, because the 2nd anniversary of my mom’s death…