Writing

If I say I’m not an artist, I don’t have to worry if I’m not accepted to this show. I can “Not For Sale” that piece I really don’t want to part with. I can turn down chances to stretch my skills by creating publicly, because that’s “for real artists.” But maybe it’s time for a change.

As someone who is at least as interested in the lyrics as the music itself, I wish someone would invent a topical categorization option for music based on lyrics.

Thanks to the value of the internet, and of connecting people with other people, I got to write some cool journalism.

As part of the 2014 YorkArts Writer’s Eye competition, I wrote a piece based on a painting titled Light Pouring Down by artist Linda Sommer. Later, local artist Missi McLaren Ritter painted a work based on this poem for a HIVE Artspace exhibit. It’s like playing telephone with art and words.

Not really resolutions, but thoughts to consider as 2014 begins.

Bipolar mania, from the perspective of someone who loves chemistry and wants desperately to feel connected.

What do you do when you need to get out of your own head, and all your friends know you just a little TOO well?

Code poetry. About purple shoes, friendship and thinking differently.

Why do I love the smell of cigarettes – Marlboro Reds, especially – and beer, even though I don’t smoke or drink? It’s weird. But now, maybe a little less weird.

Revisiting high-school poetry. A little nostalgic, a lot cringe-inducing, slightly painful. But in a good way.

What is it about the fresh start of a new school year that I find so overwhelmingly attractive?

“Ballad of the Fireflies” was written in June 2008 for a Worth1000 poetry contest.

Cube contagion: A short story, not nearly fictional enough, about office life, illness and nose-wrinkling amounts of irony.

This 2003 article for the York Daily Record was one of my favorites to report – because I got to put on the bite suit and be “attacked” by Quita, a new police dog.

One of my first writing jobs was the obituary-story beat at the York Daily Record. I loved writing stories about people who had passed away, but I also became fascinated with the art of writing about death – and so I wrote about writing about death.

One of the best things I learned as a reporter was that everyone – EVERYONE – has a story. And sometimes, instead of asking questions, the best thing to do as a journalist is to sit and wait. That’s how I connected with Denise Keller, who talked with me about her aunt Viola through some of the best phrases I’ve ever heard.