From the Hip

may your day be filled with joy. Love, space girl

"We need a story" - Alvarez I have spent the past 20 years in front a computer just trying to write. "Get up before dawn and write 60 mins before the brain is awake,” Susan Atefit-Peckham  taught me as I studied creative writing. “In that time is the story."  She would coach us on this practice encouraging us to write whatever we could and read it aloud. We would then pick one sentence or word and use that to segue into the next story. All these years later the practice has faded in and out of my memory. It might be one of the most difficult things I have tried to embed. When I think about the idea of writing for a set period of time (what some might call journaling) I am left with an "I don't know." I don't know why I can't seem to sit and type out a steady stream of words on a daily basis. I don't know why it alludes me.  Most recently, I went to see Julia Alvarez speak at Hope College as part of the Big Read. Alvarez, among many...