the other mother - free writing workshop for moms

I owe some comments,

but fresh from a mom writers panel event at the White Plains Library with Jane Green, Pamela Dorman, and Role Mommy Beth Feldman (if you were there, thank you for coming, and for the fabulous questions!) I wanted to offer up a fresh topic.

I've been thinking about wishes, about how they change over time, about how close they can be to prayer, how selfish, how light.

So here's your writing topic. Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. Using your dominant hand (say, right if you're a righty) make a list of wishes on the corresponding (in this case right) side.

Then put the pen in your nondominant hand and write on the other side. Make a list of secret wishes. This could be in code if it's easier to admit to them that way (of course, they can all belong to a character anyway!).

Now choose one wish from each column and start to write. Don't forget the sounds, textures, taste of it all. Write for nine minutes.

I hope your wishes smell like just peeled oranges.

January, the cold grey sky,

snowy miniature daffodil

the squirrels raiding the birdfeeders, the incensed nut hatch pecking the window with displeasure.

Thank you all for well wishes! I'm more mobile every day. Let's have a quick, quiet moment in praise of excellent physical therapists, now (not that they're all excellent; I've heard horror stories, but I'm feeling very lucky for the careful attention of the past months...).

I feel like I live at the PT office.

Here's a new writing topic for you this week: Write for 11 minutes (don't think, don't worry, and don't stop):about planting flowers, picking flowers, or ruining flowers.

It gives you the option of hope or collection or a good cathartic demolition. Have at it!