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Growing up in the nineties, grunge was king and the internet made a noise like a dying robot when it connected. Back then, getting to the top of your class involved being really bad at something first. But to get better, you had to actually know you were bad, understand why you were, and then,…
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As I sit here this morning, I’m still churning through yet another batch of “back burner” essay projects. I can’t help but marvel at how, after all these years of getting my writing organized, I still have over 400 essays that feel completely unworthy of publishing. It’s not even that I’m overly picky with what…
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A writer’s life is an endless collection of bits and bobs, odds and ends, and other assorted nonsense that don’t quite fit together. It’s like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle where the picture on the box keeps changing, then some sadist throws in a handful of pieces from another puzzle just to keep things…
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Despite having written hundreds of poems, over the past decade I’ve kept poetry at arm’s length. It’s still within my reach, should I choose to try writing verse again. But without the benefit of daily practice, I haven’t been able to return to the craft with much enthusiasm. I’ve long reserved poetry as a means…
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I awoke at midnight from a nightmare monochrome world entirely drained of color, my identity violently stripped away by some unseen force. When I finally awoke from this overwhelming level of fright, I found myself gasping for air. After I finally found my breath, it occurred to me that the nightmare was a reflection of…
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You may not think your own life story is all that interesting. But, what matters most in storytelling is how your story is told. It’s not so much the content, but rather the presentation. The point of view is also key. Both biographical and autobiographical stories are told with some inherent bias or deficiency on…
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Once, I wandered a crooked path through the twilight of mediocrity. It wasn’t a choice I made myself, but seemingly one that I inherited as a member of a lower middle-class family. My station in life seemed signed, sealed, and delivered, then neatly folded into a filing cabinet beside the birth certificate that called me…
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It’s been said many times that the blank page is like a canvas. Frankly, a blank page is much more like a desert. It can be the most dreaded thing for any writer to face, being vast, empty, and seemingly infinite. Ironically, it’s what a writer faces all the time. When you set yourself to…
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I grew up in the golden age of blogging, that glorious time when you could scribble a few thoughts on the internet, hit ‘publish,’ and suddenly find yourself the authority on just about anything you please. Yeah, I remember those days fondly. Back then, the most intense competition was between you and that one overly…
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Every so often, we find ourselves at moments of sudden clarity. Unfortunately, most of us dismiss them while being distracted by things of the moment, or categorizing them as inconvenient truths we’d prefer to ignore. For whatever reason, I find these moments come at almost regular intervals for me. Perhaps it’s because I consciously partake…