This and That
Hi, subscribers. I’ve been meaning to write a new installment, but have been a bit overloaded. Before long I will post again, with the intention of bringing...
The Grift
Between 7am and 8am each day last week I wrote letters and postcards to people who asked for them. After learning that the genocidal monster-in-chief...
Miss Lonelyhearts
(In the NY Daily News.^^^)I could not have anticipated the boon to my freelance journalism that 9/11 presented. The year-and-change leading up to it, I’d...
Goodbye to All That...Co-Working and Community
This week I had to make the difficult decision to shutter Kingston Writers’ Studio, the tiny co-working space for writers that I launched in January,...
Up in Smoke
People keep comparing the coronavirus pandemic to the attacks on 9/11. What happened in September, 2001 is likely the closest reference most Americans have...
Changes
A day after my most recent installment I wanted to share a word about this newsletter, my original intentions for it, and how it has been organically...
The Part of My MTV News Story That I Usually Leave Out
When I tell people about my time freelancing at MTV News in the mid-90s, I usually just regurgitate the funny parts. Like the first time I was there, in an...
This Newsletter IS My 90s/Aughts Media Memoir
The past two weeks have been hard for a variety of reasons. One of them is that coverage of __’s book transported me back to one of the most painful times in...
Am I Psychic?
I’ve been debating whether to tell you all about my spotty, intermittent, unreliable, mostly good-for-nothing psychic abilities, but here goes.Throughout my...
Hustlers
For years I’ve been telling myself the same story about my relationship with The Paparazzo: that we were a baffling mismatch. I’ve finally figured out what...
A Quick Word about Typos in this Newsletter...
Subscribers, just a quickie to say: After I sent out the last installment, I found even more typos than usual, and a link just hanging out there at the...
The Fifth-Worst Thanksgiving
I was so sad to learn earlier this week of Elizabeth Wurtzel’s passing, at 52, after a five-year battle with metastatic breast cancer. There’s a certain kind...
Feelings 🎹
^^^ The New York Times, January 2, 1979Happy new year, everyone. Please join me as I rewind to this day, 41 years ago…🎉🎉🎉On New Year’s Day, 1979, at 13, I...
Bleep Blorp 🤖
Lately it seems as if literary Twitter loses its collective mind so frequently, it can be hard to keep up.This is, of course, a trying time for writers,...
Back to School
On social media, to mark the end of the decade, people have been posting side-by-side photos of themselves from 2009 and 2019. Alongside the photos, they’ve...
My Worst Thankgsivings, Ranked
(^^^In an effort to learn how to draw myself, I’ve been using tracing paper over photos. This has nothing to do with Thanksgiving. I just wanted to decorate...
Greetings from San Miguel Allende
Last week I was interviewed by Leanna James Blackwell, director of Bay Path University’s MFA in creative writing, where I have been leading a workshop this...
The Cadillac
In the last installment I told you that in the early 90s, to my surprise, I got into some MFA programs in creative writing, including at my top choice, Sarah...
M.F.A. vs. J.O.B.
Hello, new subscribers (and old ones). My last installment reeled a bunch of you in and I feel it’s only fair to inform you that it was…kind of an anomaly?...
The Patron Saint of Canceled Men Hereby Resigns
Dear _,Regarding your recent request that I use my position and connections and good name to help garner positive reception of your forthcoming book, now...
I Have Zero Chill on My Birthday...
Hellooooo…after longer than I meant to go between editions of my newsletter! Forgive me — I have been running around a lot. Speaking of which, last week I...
Fiftysomething
A month from today I will turn 54. That number boggles my mind, but so has just about every number associated with my age since I was a tween. For much of my...
Life in the Late '80s
In this edition of “Adventures in ‘Journalism’” we will be taking a little nostalgia trip back to the late ‘80s. But before we do, a word about this...
Decisions, Decisions
As a 50something Libra, I am somewhat decision-making-impaired, especially when it comes to significant life choices. I’m so afraid of making a wrong move...
Laura Lippman Made Me Do It
Recently someone asked why I was writing this newsletter, and why I’d chosen the topic of my erratic career trajectory. I explained that more than anything...
A Little Service Journalism for You
Greetings from America, by which I mean a fairly seedy motel two blocks off the main drag in Lake George Village, a town where there’s an awful lot of red,...
Of Dollars Per Word, and Words Per Minute
Literary Twitter went berserk last week when one writer revealed she demands — and gets — $4/word for celebrity profiles and reported pieces. Things got...
'Girls Can Only Be One Thing' & Other Lies
When I was 7, a boy two years older asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. We were playing make-believe at my house, pretending my bedroom was a bank...
My New Office Near My Dead Relatives
Last week I relocated Kingston Writers’ Studio, the (minuscule, one-room) co-working space I operate, to the newly (so “newly” it’s still happening)...
What is Art?
You like me. Right now, you like me.At their annual gala last weekend, the Arts Society of Kingston awarded me an “ASKar” — a shiny, chrome candlestick-like...
I Always Face the Audience and Project
(^^^ *Does NOT actually exist. Yet. I did recently submit a revised proposal to my agent. Fingers crossed… 🤞) Greetings, “Adventures in ‘Journalism’”...
Coming soon
I’m a writer and editor in my early 50s. These days I have a pretty satisfying career, writing personal essays, working as an editor at Longreads, and...