Poison Oak, Wind, and Worry

How can I say I hate a particular month of year? As the daughter of a gardener I was raised to love all of the seasons for their varied contributions to life's natural splendors. But I think I can officially say I hate the month of October in California. I can't sleep well, the Santa Ana winds blow like witches breath, my kid has creepy looking poison oak and it isn't going away fast enough, and I'm researching Poland's dark history, the time of WWII, for my memoir all plunging me into new depths of anxiety and doom. I feel like Miss Clavel in the childhood book, Madeleine, who said "Something is not right!" My writing feels informed by this plaintive and unsettled state. All of this worry and wind seems to be stirring things up, getting me ready for National Novel Writing Month coming up shortly. More on that in the next post.

Welcome East Bay Writers!

Dear friends and writers in the San Francisco East Bay and elsewhere,

A group of writer-friends thought we needed a place to share our brilliant and not-so brilliant musings on life-as-writer in the East Bay. Some of us have day jobs in offices or houses, some have kids and some not, some are actually make a living at writing. Still others think about being a writer but are not sure where to start. What makes us unique is that we live in the Bay Area and in particular, in the East Bay. It's hectic over here. We're barely keeping it together. It's expensive, it's suburban, it's soccer mom-dads and maybe yoga on the weekends, unpaid bills and keeping up with the Jones's, its wildly creative and wildly dysfunctional, naturally beautiful, and isolating, all at once.

So how do we keep the balls juggling? How do we find moments of happiness? How do we write and do all of this other stuff? We start here, by saying what's real, what's beneath surface, what we're afraid of, and even what we wish for.