In “Spirit of the Law,” a short story I’ve been working on, I want to explore life after death, and something else—how the dead go on living or not living, if only in our memory, in the physical places where we’ve known them. (more…)
I opened the I Ching at random this morning and came up with #38, K’uei / Opposition. The commentary says it is common for two opposites to exist together, needing to find relationship. I realize an opposition is being set up just in the act of writing my memoir Drop Out: my inner writer will be observing everything I do closely and recording what she finds valuable. I’m reminded of a review of Journey into the Dark: The Tunnel by William Gass that appeared in The New York Times Book Review: 
“Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for the love of it, then you do it for a few friends, and finally you do it for money.” —Molière
In addition to writing adult fiction and non-fiction, I also create pieces for children. Today, I tried to start a children’s story of a girl sleeping in an elegant dollhouse based on a dream image that has stayed with me. But after a few sentences, I felt extremely critical of what I had written. I had to stop. For now. Let it breathe, I said to myself. Let the criticalness soften—fall away. 
At a recent poetry reading I gave, I was asked if I wrote for a particular ideal reader, something I hadn’t given much thought to. So here is my response to that question, though I’m sure other writers will approach it differently. 
Ellen Birkett Morris is the author of 
Mimi Herman is the author of The Kudzu Queen, A Field Guide to Human Emotions, and Logophilia. Her novel The Kudzu Queen was selected by The North Carolina Center for the Book for the 2023 Library of Congress “Great Reads from Great Places” program and longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her writing has appeared in LitHub, Michigan Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Crab Orchard Review and many other journals. Mimi is a member of the Board of Directors for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, a Warren Wilson MFA alumna, and a Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow. She directs weeklong Writeaways writing workshops in France, Italy, Ireland, New Mexico and online. For more information visit her at 
writing isn’t going well, and I need to create order somewhere, even if it’s not appearing on the page. I’m an overachiever, so the problem with housekeeping and me is that I’ll start out cleaning the bathtub, and end up replacing the plumbing. As for personal hygiene, you’ll be relieved to know that I tend to keep that up pretty well, no matter how the writing is going.
One of the best things about being a writer is that you can take your work with you no matter where you go. Of course, this is true now for lots of jobs because of Zoom and the internet and the acceptance of hybrid work. But a writer has always been a
I recently read the book Words as Eggs by Jungian analyst Russell Lockhart. The idea for the work, and the chapter from which the title comes, originated in one of Lockhart’s dreams. A voice in his dream said “Do you not know that words are eggs, that words carry life, that words give birth?” (92). 
Fiction writers have been called many things, but magician seems to me the best description. They dip into the black hat of their imagination and produce an endless variety of characters, situations, images, genres, events, and styles. The effect on readers is nothing less than magical, the reader also becoming a magician, assisting in making visible what wasn’t there before. 
A writing friend of mine has papered her bathroom with rejection slips. Viewed in that context, they become less weighty and are put into perspective. As writers, we tend to think of rejections from publishers as negative. But rejections can be gifts in disguise, offering us a way to make lemonade out of lemons. 
Small presses don’t have the reputation that larger presses do of maintaining high editorial standards. But my experience with these presses, especially Regal House, the one that published 
Sometimes I get stuck in feeling I must complete something I’m working on. Or must make a scene into a story rather than just letting myself have fun with the writing. I get too bogged down in the heavy stuff of being a writer. I’ve discovered that to get unstuck, I need to push aside my concerns and just write whatever is surfacing in the moment that wants to be heard. That freedom then allows me to dig into a draft I’ve gotten stuck in and usually enables me to make progress again. 
I continue to learn from the journals I kept almost 40 years ago.
I’ve been rereading journals I wrote almost 40 years ago that still have relevance. I had attended a writing workshop at Wellspring, a former retreat center in Philo, CA. The property had the Navarro River passing through it, as well as several rustic but delightful cabins for guests. For me, the focus on writing was important, but my main reason for being there was the exposure to nature. I was enjoying my time at this Wellspring workshop and being immersed for the weekend in nature. 
My interest in fairy tales has been revived from reading my journals from forty years ago. At that time, I was investigating the art fairy tale. The Grimm’s fairy tales grew out of the oral tradition, but ones that Hans Christian Andersen and others wrote are part of the art fairy tale genre. I was interested then in exploring that mode in my own writing. I’d discovered that some of the stories I’d created fit there. Discovering this accepted category had heartened me to be do more of them and to believe in their worth. Turkey: Under Construction
September 28, 2009
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It wasn’t what I expected. Derelict buildings, many abandoned for years, others trapped in disrepair, doors hanging on one hinge, windows missing, exterior walls bare of paint and understructure exposed. Istanbul—a jumble of yellow taxis jostling for space on the narrow streets, thousands of pedestrians dodging cars and struggling to cross streets without being hit.
It wasn’t Europe any longer, though parts of the city are on the European side of the Bosphorus. It wasn’t the West. It was Asia, only the residents pronounced it “Ah-sha,” with a kind of reverential air. The word sounded foreign, even in their mouths, but for us it was like entering Alice’s rabbit hole, everything turned inside out and upside down. Under construction.
The rules we’d learned for walking and driving no longer applied—solid lines become broken and vice versa. Red lights mean green. Stop signs? Just ignore them. And cars are built to speed and pass everything on the road.
Carpet salesmen lurk around every corner, repeating their spiel—“You American? Come to my place for apple tea. I want to be your friend.” The press of people on the sidewalks, many aimless. Men as donkeys, hauling carts laden with watermelons or tomatoes. I’m describing the Sultanahmet area, the heart of historic old Istanbul, of course, but we had similar experiences everywhere we went along Turkey’s Southwest coast.
Did these experiences turn us off? No. They actually made us fall in love not only with Istanbul, but also with the other parts of Turkey we visited, though it took time for the country to work its magic on us.
Before our trip, Turkey had called up images of the Arabian Nights, mysterious to a Canadian-born American. But once there, the Arabian Nights’ reference faltered: I didn’t see men wearing pajamas, a towel wrapped around their head, and golden slippers with a curled-up toe. Many looked like the guys on American streets, wearing t-shirts and jeans, though some, especially the older men, had the kind of groomed mustache I’d expected to find.
Still, this definitely wasn’t California. It also wasn’t the East either. Located in such a pivotal area, Turkey has one foot in both the West and the East. Its historical roots go deep and seem tangled with every other civilization. Consequently, there’s nothing straightforward or predictable about the country or its people.
It’s been on the verge of becoming a distinct nation since Ataturk took hold in the early 1900s and hammered it into existence. But the same problems he faced in the early part of the 20th Century still plague the people and the land. A strong pull exists from the Islamic factions, particularly the more fervently religious ones, to retreat and align themselves with other Muslims rather than with this relatively new place called Turkey.
Yet we left feeling hopeful, the highlight of our time there the conversations and meetings we had with the new “Young Turks,” as important and potentially influential as those young officers referred to as the “Young Turks” in an Ataturk biography. They hold the promise for the country’s future.
