Blueberries Belong in the Refrigerator: In Which We Refuse to Be Rendered Invisible

As I write this, it is 7:00 on a Saturday night and I sit in the cafeteria of the middle school/high school where I work. Tonight I am a backstage helper at one of our theater program’s performances of The Sound of Music. My twins—seniors this year—are members of the stage crew. The kids are all behaving themselves perfectly, leaving me time to write.

Do you remember what it’s like to be a teenager? I do. I remember exactly how it felt to be seven, twelve, fifteen, twenty-two, thirty. I think that visceral and sensory memory helps me write my characters. (As with the coming-of-age mother/teen daughter novel I will be publishing later this year—more to come on that!)

Right now, though, in my current work-in-progress, I am writing about how it feels to be fifty, because, honestly, I’m trying to figure it out.

When you’re trying to write a ninety thousand-word novel, it helps to have a compelling question to answer, one that has been plaguing you, preferably one you do not yet know the answer to. What will you do when you get to the middle of life, your kids are grown, and now you can make changes—what will you change? What needs to change?

Read the full post on my Substack page!