Found this schedule taped to the wall next to our cats’ feeding dishes. 8:00am – Sit in the middle of the pile of rumpled blankets & sheets while humans try to make the bed. Jump down thirty seconds after they …
Continue readingAuthor: Katrina Swaim
Pen, Paper, People
This is going to sound like bragging, and maybe it is: We’ve been under stay-at-home orders for two and a half weeks, and I haven’t been bored for one single second. Even in my pre-pandemic life, at any given moment …
Continue readingLove in a Time of COVID-19
Global pandemic. The words conjure mental images of overworked doctors, hospital floors packed with the gravely ill, infrastructure shutdown, and fearful people huddling together in their tiny germboxes, flanked all around by useless medicines and dwindling food supplies. All overlaid …
Continue readingReturn to Nicaragua
It was several years ago now that I timorously signed up to join a group from my church that was traveling to Nicaragua on a short term mission trip. Ostensibly, our purpose was to build sustainable water filters in people’s …
Continue readingThe Stories We Tell Ourselves
I’ve been thinking lately about my tendency to mythologize my life. Do all writers do this? Or is it just a human thing, a natural response to our innate storytelling instinct? That’s more likely. Whatever the reason for it, the …
Continue readingStill Learning
I love to learn new things. I always have. I was that slightly annoying kid in school whose hand was perpetually up, whether to ask a question or to answer one. I loved picking out my classes every semester in …
Continue readingAll In Mail Never Clinking
“Take Pashmina with you,” Mother said, and Raina could tell by the jut of her hip that it would be no use to argue. It was bad enough that she had to fill the water jars today. She had already …
Continue readingReady, Set, Write!
🎵 It’s the most wonderful time of the year… 🎶 No, not Christmas—NaNoWriMo! Come November 1st, writers all over the world will bend to their keyboards in an attempt to conjure 50,000 words out of thin air before midnight on …
Continue readingMeat
One of our local NaNoWriMo coordinators gave our Facebook group a silly prompt to warm up for NaNo prep season. It was fun to stretch those flash fiction muscles a bit. Prompt and my contribution are below: “Hey NaNo-ites, how …
Continue readingUnpopular Jane Austen Opinions
After spotting the question on someone’s Twitter stream, I posed it to my Facebook friends. “What is your unpopular opinion about Jane Austen’s books?” Here are some of mine: * Fanny Price is upright, admirable, and praiseworthy. She is also …
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