The problem with any writer who happens to experience that rare, fleeting phenomenon known as “external validation” is that for a few moments, we go a little mad. Which is to say: we start believing our own hype. And for a writer, truly, what greater madness is there than believing in yourself? Don’t get me…
I graduated high school in 1998, either (depending on which arbitrary marker you choose) the last of Gen-Xers or the first of the Millennials. Like so many of us who came of age in the 90s, Friends was a delightful, aspirational glimpse of the future. (I had no perspective to realize that my friends of…
My writing pitches don’t get accepted often. Sometimes an editor will contact me directly, and I’ll send them a piece, and if it gets published, it may do quite well (my piece on bullying for The Washington Post was an example of that), but it rarely gets to that point. More often than not, I’ll…
Hello, hi, yes, I would like to speak to the manager please? No, I don’t think that this is something you could help me with … okay. Okay, fine. Yes, so I’ve been shopping here for several years, and it’s always been a really positive experience. But yesterday I was walking down the freezer aisle…
