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. Tracking Freedom
April 20, 2014
No Comments
Tracking Freedom
I had a shock today. I had assigned two readings to my freshmen students at the University of San Francisco on how easily our various gadgets track us, especially cell phones. One essay was informative, an objective reporting on how the tracking happens and what the legal ramifications are. The other took a much more emotional stance, the author wanting to stress the dangers of being constantly surveilled.
When I asked if the topic concerned them at all, most just shrugged their shoulders. They are accustomed to their parents checking where they are at all times, from when they were in grade school until now. I also learned that many of them have phone apps where they can track their friends and vice versa. I blanched, realizing they had lived their lives not knowing what it means to be free from such scrutiny. If it wasn’t the government keeping a close watch on their activities, then it was their family and/or friends.
While there is something comforting about being held in that kind of web (and here I’m not referring to the World Wide Web), a loving network, it also suggests to me what it’s like to be trapped in a spider’s snare. The idea that none of us can have a moment when we aren’t being scrutinized in some way makes me shudder. What has happened to the notion of privacy and freedom? Am I old-fashioned to think they still are virtues?
When I told my students that I grew up in a very different era, they seemed mildly interested. I spoke of living on a farm in my early years, free to roam at will from sun up till sun down. Though fences marked property boundaries, and I had certain restrictions on my movements, I always could find plenty of open space on the vast Canadian prairies where I could wander and wonder for hours. Only at home, sometimes, when Mum asked me what I was doing or thinking, did I occasionally feel intruded on.
Even though we left the farm and moved to Calgary when I was eight, I still had minimal limitations. I could borrow my uncle Jack’s bike and ride across town to the Glenmore Dam where I spent the day exploring. Or I spent hours at an area where tunnels had worn into the hillside’s sandy soil, speeding down the slope on a piece of cardboard, returning to the top over and over for the thrill of the ride.
No one walked me to school. No one tracked me after school on my way home. Phones weren’t all that prevalent then, so parents weren’t constantly calling one another, checking to see what their kids were doing. Nor were they constantly calling their kids or insisting that the children call them to check in. I had opportunities to test myself against the unexpected and to develop survival skills: someone wasn’t always there to rescue me. The apps that could reveal my movements didn’t exist.
I can only imagine what it must feel like to grow up knowing I’m continuously being watched. To have one’s self regularly penetrated by these digital devices must have an impact on one’s sense of self, creating extreme self-consciousness. Wouldn’t we feel on guard at all times, protective of our hidden parts, fearful of being violated, creating a thick protective shield in response? How difficult it must be to then open oneself up to others at any deep level.
As a child, I had a private self that I didn’t fear someone would breach. I knew what it felt like to be free of unnecessary restraints, the inner freedom to emerge as naturally as a flower does from the original seed. I had and still have a reference point between that earlier free state of mind and when I’m sometimes living in less unrestricted circumstances. But today’s youth are caught within the web created by these digital devices. While it may make them feel connected to others 24/7, I fear it’s at the risk of being disconnected from themselves at some deep level. If our lives are mainly lived on a public stage (cell phones, texting, social network sites, etc.), then when or where is there time for a private self to gestate?
It’s an appropriate question to be asking, I think, on this weekend when some are observing Passover as well as the Christian ritual of resurrection and rebirth. Passover reminds us of the ways we can be enslaved to any number of things and the effort it takes to become free. Easter celebrates Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and symbolizes how we can be reborn in our own lives if we want to leave behind the things we’re enslaved to.
I hope by discussing the two previously mentioned articles with my students that a door has opened within them, allowing another perspective to emerge. Language can be a great vehicle for conveying truths (and lies, unfortunately) if we’re ready to hear them. As I’m reminded each time my husband and I host a Seder, it’s those words recapping the Israeli experience that remind us not only of how we can be enslaved but also of how to become free again.
Pen-L Press will be publishing my novel Fling in 2015. A wildly comic romp on mothers, daughters, art, and death, the book should appeal to a broad range of readers. While the main characters are middle-aged and older, their zest for life would draw readers of all ages, male or female, attracting the youthful adventurer in most people. Though women may identify more readily with Feather and Bubbles’ daughter and mother struggles, the heart of the book is how they approach their aging selves and are open to new experiences. Since art and imagination are key to this narrative, artists of all ages would find something to enjoy. And because the book crosses many borders (Scotland, Canada, the U.S., and Mexico), it also can’t be limited to a specific age group, social class, gender, or region.
My first fan letter for Fling came from an 80 year-old woman who lives in the tiny village of Christina Lake, B.C. My son, who also lives there, had given her my manuscript to read. She said, “I just wanted to express to you how very much I enjoyed your writing. I started it and didn’t stop till I had read it all. I very much like your style and your subtle humor. Thank you for a most enjoyable read. I can’t understand why it hasn’t been scooped up by some publisher. But I know that it will be. In my estimation I know that it is excellent literary work. I am a voracious reader and have been since grade 4. I remember my first book was Tom Sawyer and I have never stopped since then. I go through 4 to 5 books a week. We are so fortunate here at the Lake now. The Library staff in Grand Forks come out here every Wednesday. I have become very fond of the young lady who comes out. She provides me with all the award winning books and orders others for me. Again I want to express to you how very much I enjoyed your manuscript. Have patience my dear….it will be published to wide acclaim I am so sure.” —Joan Fornelli.
Here is a synopsis:
Feather, an aging hippie, returns to her Calgary home to help her mother, Bubbles, celebrate her 90th birthday. Bubbles has received mail from the dead letter office in Mexico City, asking her to pick up her mother’s ashes, left there seventy years earlier and only now surfacing. Bubbles’ mother, Scottish by birth, had died in Mexico in the late 1920s after taking off with a married man and abandoning her husband and kids.
A woman with a mission, and still vigorous, Bubbles convinces a reluctant Feather to take her to Mexico so she can recover the ashes and give her mother a proper burial. Both women have recently shed husbands and have a secondary agenda: they’d like a little action. And they get it.
Alternating narratives weave together Feather and Bubbles’ odyssey with their colorful Scottish ancestors, creating a family tapestry. The “now” thread presents the two women as they travel south from Canada to San Francisco and then Mexico, covering a span of about six months. “Now” and “then” merge in Mexico when Bubbles’ long-dead mother, grandmother, and grandfather turn up, enlivening the narrative with their antics.
In Mexico, the land where reality and magic co-exist, Feather gets a new sense of her mother. The Indian villagers mistake Bubbles for a well-known rain goddess, praying for her to bring rain so their land will thrive again. Feather, who’s been seeking “The Goddess” for years, eventually realizes what she’s overlooked.
Meanwhile, Bubbles’ quest for her mother’s ashes (and a new man) has increased her zest for life. A shrewd business woman (she’s raised chickens, sold her crafts, taken in bizarre boarders, and has a sure-fire system for winning at bingo and lotteries), she’s certain she’s found the fountain of youth at a mineral springs outside San Miguel de Allende; she’s determined to bottle the water and sell it.
But gambling is her first love, and unlike most women her age, fun-loving Bubbles takes risks, believing she’s immortal. Unlike her daughter, Bubbles doesn’t hold back in any way, eating heartily, lusting after strangers, her youthful spirit and innocence convincing readers that they’ve found the fountain of youth themselves in this character. At ninety, she comes into her own, coming to age, proving it’s never too late to fulfill one’s dreams.
Fling, a meditation on death, mothers and daughters, and art, suggests that the fountain of youth is the imagination, and this is what they all discover in Mexico. It’s what Bubbles wants to bottle, but she doesn’t need to. She embodies it. The whole family does.
