Last Sunday, I went to the closing ceremony of the Whitney Memorial United Methodist Church, a congregation of Japanese Americans who voted to shut their doors this spring. I sat in the back of Puyallup United Methodist Church in a different pew from where I sit most Sundays. Here I saw Shirley DeLarme and Ann Berney… Read more
Writing
Criticism and rejection are the best parts of becoming a writer or other artist. I know. That’s insane. Even as I write this, I am avoiding re-reading critiques I recently received. I am avoiding it like I avoided driving down the icy road where my van slid and almost tipped over the edge of a cliff last January… Read more
The moment I waved the gate card at the unresponsive lock, I knew I should have read the email before making the hour and a half drive out to Lake Trask. My boys and I looked up to see the sign on the gate boldly telling us to park our vehicle and check in at… Read more
It’s an absolutely crazy idea but one of my colleagues and I are going to start an art club at work. It’s crazy because who has that kind of time? It’s crazy because I should focus more on my writing. It’s crazy because we so often want to flee the building at the end of… Read more
A short while back, I listened to a T.V. screenwriter explain his process while making the series Colony. Carlton Cuse described a large room filled with writers throwing ideas around the room that bounced off of one another and grew bigger, taking shape and then forming storylines. The creator of the series Lost told the interviewer he… Read more
I am stuck. I have a deadline of May 19th to finish revising my novel and it won’t let me move forward. Maybe it’s because I’ve gotten side tracked with writing for the band I play with. Maybe it’s because the day job has been especially demanding lately. Maybe it’s because the cottonwood covering the… Read more
My mother-in-law Vivian likes to read popcorn Christian romances. You know the type. There’s a swooning woman and a shirtless guy on every cover of the stacks of books she keeps close at hand. God is always a player in these stories so they are not exactly Harlequins — but they aren’t far off. Once… Read more
I do kid crafts. Sometimes I do them without kids. My latest big idea was a Leap Year Day with a frog theme. (Get it? Leap? Frog? I found this grand idea surfing around the Internet.) I planned to make a time capsule out of a Pringles can, green construction paper and various cheap decor… Read more