After a lifetime of working, I’m back to freelance writing in retirement. The pace is slower. I’m learning to enjoy the quiet before work, the work, and the freedom to do things my own way. A Lifetime of Working, Not…
How can adults turn their life experiences into children’s stories? Start with the experience, but don’t simply retell the adult version of it. Find the part that a child can feel, understand, and make sense of in the child’s own…
What a Childhood Game Taught Me About Identity, Literature, and the Limits of Categories When I was a child, we used to play a game called Thinking of Categories. The game moved to a rhythmic pattern of clapping. One of…
Writing Begins with Naming Writing does not begin with ideas, as I once thought, but with something more grounded, almost physical, a name. A place arrives first as a label before it becomes a landscape on the page. A character…
This is a true story of a relative OFW homecoming in the Philippines, drawn from my own experience and memory. I write it here as creative nonfiction flash memoir, using the devices of writing short fiction. I changed all the…