“These are words I’ve lived and written by; they have allowed me to find meaning and purpose in every age, stage, experience adventure and misadventure in life. Here, I do it again, focusing on our lives, mine and yours, as writers. I give some advice; I tell some stories.
"Thanks for the title, Maurice.”
Remember “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon? There’s an apocryphal story about it. Decades ago Simon was flying across country to New York with her then-back-up singer and piano player, Billy Mernit. He noticed a reflection: what was outside the plane window was mirrored in her coffee cup. He said to her offhandedly, “Look, clouds in your coffee.” Which became,… Read More
This is an edited version of my most often-requested post. The original appeared in 2009. The other night, I went to bed thinking about how one becomes lovable, as in becoming able, finally, to give and receive love. It was still on my mind the next morning, as I was making breakfast. I cracked two eggs into a small stainless steel… Read More
GETTING RE-PSYCHED: A TAKE-TWO POST I knew I shouldn’t have been doing those overhead presses with weights, even scaling it down to little bitty weights, in the BodyPump classes at the YMCA in Nashville, this last winter — I just knew I shouldn’t. But I love that class, and I get caught up in the moment, and so I did… Read More
I blame, or credit, Carol Gaddy. She heard me reading poetry between sets of a bluegrass band at a now-defunct nightclub in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. If you are silly enough to attempt such a reading, you will find your poetry greatly improved by the endeavor. The feedback is like no other: if one single phrase isn’t smacking your audience upside… Read More
“Daddy,” I said admiringly, “You should run for president.” I was six. Sitting on the dirty clothes hamper in the bathroom, my back to the window, watching him shave late one afternoon. He stood, in his white boxers, facing the mirrored white medicine cabinet. At that time, he was a Broadway critic, and if he was going out to an… Read More
November, the month that begins with the syllable “No.” And this year, in 2016, the month when more than half of the Americans who voted woke up to discover the country in which they lived was not the one in which they thought they lived. What is there to say yes to in November, particularly this one? *** On the… Read More
As the granddaughter of despised immigrants (Russian Jews) who worked their way up from nothing, doing factory leather piece-good work on New York’s Lower East Side, I have always felt that far from taking away jobs or anything else, newcomers energize America. For as long as I’ve understood what they, like most immigrants, endured to get here, I have also understood… Read More
My long out-of-print children’s book WIND ROSE just may be re-issued. Unlikely: outest of out chances, longest of long shots. Still, I needed to find a copy to send to the perhaps-publisher. I went to the shelf where I keep copies of books I’ve written in my (this is unbelievable to me) 47-year career as a professional freelance writer (my first… Read More
If there is nothing after this, I thought, right after I said it, this is enough. The “it” I’d heard myself say out loud was one word: “Heaven.” I don’t believe in heaven. I don’t not believe in heaven either, though I’m doubtful. I’d stepped out for a quick stretch-break from my laptop. I had an ostensible, wholly unnecessary task: carry recyclables to… Read More
It’s the softest sound in the world, and one only occasionally hears it: a flower falling. This morning, sitting in the right place, I heard it. A single foxglove blossom dropped from the arrangement I had placed on a table yesterday. It’s such a small sound, but it stayed with me all day. Until I finally asked myself, ” Why?”… Read More
Last year, at the get-together after the memorial service for poet Miller Williams, his daughter, singer/songwriter/musician Lucinda Williams, said to me, “You know what’s strange? You know when I cried? I cried the day my father told me he was through writing poetry. That he could no longer do it. So far I haven’t cried at all since his actual death, but… Read More
How does anyone get good at anything? Especially, those people who are astoundingly good — how on earth do they get that way? No matter who your favorite musician is (or writer, athlete, actor, artist), he or she does three things. The things that anyone, who is good at anything, does. Those three things: Practice. Rehearse. Perform. Practicing Practice (as I define it)… Read More
“My late father, Maurice Zolotow, was a Hollywood biographer, a professional freelance writer and passionate reader. Whenever I went through hard times, personally or professionally, Maurice could be counted on to tell me two things. The first was advice: ‘Write your way out of it!’ he’d bark, directively. But then, more thoughtfully, he’d say, ‘It’s all material, Cres. Nothing is wasted on the writer.’
