How is it (U.S.) Thanksgiving week already????
The kind folks at Annie Bloom’s Books here in Portland have a special arrangement with local authors (like me!): if you want to order a signed copy of The Prairie Thief or The Nerviest Girl in the World, you can click this link and order directly from Annie Bloom’s. They will notify me and I’ll stop by the shop and write a personalized inscription before they ship the book to you.
The shop doesn’t have direct-order links to Fox and Crow Are Not Friends or my Inch and Roly series, but if you reach out to them you can probably add any of those to your order.
I have to plan time for making the trip across the river to the bookshop, so if you’d like to give one of my books to a special kid or teacher on your gift list, I’d recommend ordering as soon as possible.
Ordering from Annie Bloom’s is a win all around! You’ll be supporting a truly wonderful independent bookstore, you’ll be supporting my work (and other local authors—check them out!), and you’ll be able to cross some special someones off your shopping list. Easy peasy! Merry and bright!
November 18, 2024 @ 12:44 pm | Filed under:
Bloggity 
Design by Mary Corbett. Stitched by me in 2020.
Great post by Seth Werkheiser of Social Media Escape Club:
Think of the 1,000s of posts you’ve put on social media over the last decade. That. That’s what you’ll put on your site.
Those links you send to friends via text? Yeah, put them on your site and write about ‘em. Same with YouTube videos and albums you find on Bandcamp and Spotify.
All those “image assets” you posted on Instagram that 95% of your fans didn’t even see? Put those on your website.
The interviews, and bits of press you’ve gotten? Put them on your website.
He reminded me of the MANY MANY times I’ve thought: I should start grabbing my old Instagram pics and reposting them on the blog. So consider these grabbed: a few glimpses of November 2020 (because the leaves caught my eye as I scrolled down my own feed).
real leaves I stitched together for fun
Klickitat Street, probably
Reminder upon reminder: the autumn leaves hoop (a beautiful Mary Corbett design that I thoroughly enjoyed stitching) is sitting in a pile with about 30 other finished pieces of embroidery that I haven’t bothered to hang in the new house! Eek. We’ve been here for over a year. Every time I think about it (which honestly hasn’t been often), I’ll think: oh but maybe we should paint that wall first. WHICH wall? I don’t even know. This one, I guess.
There’s a slip of paper I stick on the first page of a new notebook, moving it from book to book as I fill them up.
Dreams
Memories
Zero drafts
Project notes
Obsessions
Feelings
Experiences
Questions
Observations
A list to remind me what the notebook is for. Funny: I forgot to include Quotes, even though all my notebooks are filled with lines & passages copied from things I’ve read. Really my most reliable starting point.
In a recent newsletter, I wrote about Kim Stafford’s four-step journaling process that results in a poem a day for him—a rather amazing output, to be sure, but he is committed to getting something down quickly and posting it as a kind of love letter to the world.
I love collecting the quick-capture habits of other artists, writers, poets. The thinking-out-loud, the learning-in-public. I’ve had periods when that was my habit, too. Write fast and hit publish.
I’m grateful that was my very nearly daily habit (!) when my kids were little. So many stories and remarks I would have forgotten! They tell me they still like to roam through the archives, revisiting their smaller selves there.
Something I’m mapping in my notebook lately: impulses. The course or book or product that tempts me. Why? What is the secret wish it promises to grant? Do I already possess the power to grant it on my own?
Secret wishes, gosh. So many of them. And some not-at-all secret ones, now tucked up for a small window of dormancy, gathering nourishment, fattening up for the season to come.
