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on keeping the channel open
I just counted, and I have 37 houseplants. I only bought about 10–the rest came from propagating, cuttings, and lately, now that my compost is the ripe old age of six months, from the soil itself. In fact, so many seedlings have sprouted that I just scooped some compost into a tin can and am…
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a night at the tiki
“What do you do?” a random drunk guy yelled over the crowd. The guitarist in the corner was on his third “Wagon Wheel” of the night, so you know the tiki bar was hopping. A little tipsy myself, I yelled back, “I’m a writer!” A moment of alarm. Did that sound dumb? Would he laugh?…
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a bridge, a mask
Last week I sat down to write an essay about the year I spent leading creativity workshops in a women’s prison. It felt like an obvious topic, one that would hook people’s interest and inevitably lead somewhere interesting. But it didn’t. Every paragraph was a dead end. Finally I walked away. Later that night, though,…
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on self-trust: or, how to scare the muse away
Two weeks ago, I had to tell a potential client that I couldn’t commit to the project we’d been discussing. I really didn’t want to have that conversation. They were expecting me to sign a contract soon, and I knew they’d be disappointed. But if I didn’t say something, the gnawing feelings would only keep…
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what does a writing coach do?
I guess you could say I’ve been writing a memoir for years now, ever since some friends and I started a monthly writing group and chose a “how to write a memoir” as a guide. (Oddly, none of us was actually planning to write a memoir; we just wanted to read the book.)1 Sometimes I…
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when writing gets boring
The other day I asked a client how his memoir was going, and he told me he was thinking of quitting. “It’s getting boring, reliving the same events over and over,” he said. “I’ve already told the story a hundred times; it’s not new anymore.” This struck me because I often talk about writing as…
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did you see the pigeon?
Soon after I got to Peru, I was walking along the boardwalk in San Bartolo. Several stories below the ocean crashed into the shore, unburdened by swimmers or surfers. Cevicherias sat empty, waiting for the summer crowd. I’d decided to learn Spanish about a week before, so naturally I started eavesdropping on everyone I passed.…
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if you understand calculus
When I was living in Brooklyn (a lifetime ago now), one of my roommates taught math at City College. He taught he same class every year: freshman-level calc. “Don’t you get bored teaching the same course?” I asked him once. “Wouldn’t you rather have some variety?” “No, I like this course,” he said. “Why?” I…
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music of waves
When I got to Punta Negra – a tiny, quiet beach town about 30 miles south of Lima – the first thing I noticed was the slow, bassy build of the waves. They were the biggest I’d ever seen, the loudest and slowest I’d ever heard. They crashed one by one, a slow motion metronome,…
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an epiphany at church
A snapshot of a memory: I’m seven or eight, at church, sitting in a short pew with my mom and sister. The choir is to our left, where my father stands with about half the teachers from my school. Sunlight streams in through the skylights onto the wooden altar steps. The choir sings—pretty, polyphonic, a…
Kimberly Bunker, MFA 