“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.”
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
The car — I put gas in it yesterday — has only one small suitcase and two audiobooks. I packed lightly; it’ll only be an overnight. But my heart and mind are much more densely packed for this brief trip, to Sevierville, Tennessee. To see Hattie Mae. *** 1986. We used to say, of Dairy Hollow House, “It’s Eureka’s best inn,… Read More
Because yesterday was going to be a very full day, rather than put off what I consider my daily must-do’s until later, I did them first thing in the morning. The must-do’s include a very brief practice that passes for meditation or devotions (it’s not exactly either, but that’s the closest summation). And, writing practice. And, the drinking of alkalized… Read More
“That’s not the name of the song!” my father, Maurice, would say, mock-irritated. “It’s ‘Theme from the Sandpiper’, ‘Theme from the Sandpiper’!” But Charlotte, my mother, would merely give her half-smile, inscrutable. Like almost everyone else, she called the song “The Shadow of Your Smile.” That’s a line from the lyrics. The most memorable line, the one which everyone who’s ever… Read More
He would have been 60 yesterday, my late husband. But he didn’t even live to 50. In 2000, he went on his usual 3 times a week bicycle ride out towards Beaver Lake, turned at the Conoco station (which, because they used to rent canoes out there, he always referred to as the “Canoe-Co”) and headed home. Instead, he bicycled… Read More
This is one of four posts on poundcakes; which is to say, on life. And death. And stories. In June 2012, I went to a memorial for Maurice Sendak, the legendary children’s book writer-illustrator. He’d died the month before, at 84. Among his countless accomplishments, Maurice illustrated one of the books my mother, Charlotte Zolotow, wrote. His pictures for her Mr. Rabbit and the… Read More
Small Satisfactions, Relentless Incrementalism: night-time walk in a town where I was young Last Saturday, for the first time in five days (I’d had company), I reached my daily goal of 10,000 steps, counted on my Fitbit. I reached it with a cool 10 minutes to spare before midnight. This happened because, as I was working away that evening, I… Read More
Quick, think of your favorite musician. Bonnie Raitt? Yo-Yo Ma? Doesn’t matter. John Coltrane? Lady Gaga? Eric Clapton? Youssou N’Dour? Doesn’t matter. Dolly Parton, Mirian McPartland, Howlin’ Wolf, Luciano Pavarotti? Still doesn’t matter. Because whoever he or she is, he or she did (and, if alive, still does) three things that anyone, who is good at anything, does. Those three things:… 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.’
