Please subscribe to my newsletter to get writing news and updates. Writers all have those nights, don’t we? I know I do. It starts out innocently enough. I get up to go to the bathroom. I quickly check my phone. Then something happens in my brain… and I can’t seem to turn it off. I’m writing this at 4 in the morning because I haven’t been able to fall asleep again since somewhere around 2:30am. I’m starting to realize that these nights happen to me once every couple of months. They come, and they go, and then they disappear again. But they always come back. It wasn’t always like this, however. In…
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A year ago, I was single, unemployed, homeless, broke, fat and drunk
Please subscribe to my newsletter to get writing news and updates. Exactly a year ago, I had just arrived in my hometown of Fort Myers, FL. After 11 and a half happy years as a resident of New York City, I had decided to move back to Southwest Florida with my tail between my legs. Unknown to my friends at the time, I had just come out of the darkest place of my life and decided that what I needed was to restart. So in early April 2016, I accepted my parent’s invitation to move back home for a little while and set about changing my life. I packed up my apartment, sold as…
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Here’s what happens when a writer has too many ideas
Please subscribe to my newsletter to get writing news and updates. So if you’ve spent any amount of time around me in real life, then you probably know one thing about me: I get easily excited. I don’t know if I would consider myself a super impulsive person, but I’m not not an impulsive person. I think my life partner Adam would probably disagree with that statement, actually, as he’s mentioned my impulsivity a few times here and there (and by “few” I mean… maybe many). What I consider myself, actually, is an ideas person. I get ideas all the damn time, about any variety of subjects. My chosen career of writer and editor…
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Thoughts on turning 31… and the
future of Map Your 30s blogPlease subscribe to my newsletter to get writing news and updates. When I first started writing about turning 30 years old and decided to create the Map Your 30s Blog, my idea was simple: I wanted to write about all of the changes happening in my life and I wanted to make the point that life doesn’t end when you’re 30. In fact, in my very first post after turning the big 3-0, I said that “my goal with the Map Your 30s blog is to prove that turning this momentous decade doesn’t have to be the end of your journey.” I wanted to write about how it’s okay not to have everything…
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Introducing Moscow Chica – now a blog, book and newsletter [#yearofwriting]
Please subscribe to my newsletter to get writing news and updates. As you’ve probably noticed right above this sentence, there is something new in my life – and that is that my in-the-works memoir, Moscow Chica: How Growing Up Russian and Cuban Made Me an American, is now also being joined by a brand-new Medium blog (or publication, as they call it) and a newsletter… all basically in service of my writing about multiculturalism, Russia, Cuba, being American today, immigrant issues and rights, and more. Here’s the thing I realized recently: Writing a memoir takes TIME. So very much time! One of the commitments I made to myself during this #yearofwriting is…
