My husband’s Siri sounded different than mine tonight and I felt *very* threatened at the notion mine may have changed, so I asked her for the weather. She sounded normal, which was unfortunately a huge relief to me, so what I’m really saying is that we are (I am) cooked.

The piece doesn’t get into gender and lord knows there are ego-driven women. But reflecting on my decades of attending meetings that in retrospect I can see involved varying degrees of ego fluffing on the part of a leader, an outlier is a Big Deal tv/film company helmed by women.

Please spread the word! I’m still open to submissions for the second volume of Thyme Travellers: An Anthology of Palestinian Speculative Fiction! Professional pay rate for short stories. Deadline is the end of August. Here are the details: soniasulaiman.com/thyme-travel...

You are not too sensitive. In fact it is the opposite. You are too powerful

A thing about my 5 y.o. is that she has no idea just how hard she’s winning an argument with me when she says, “No means no.” (I asked two — aka one-too-many — times if she would reconsider her stance on mashed potatoes by having a taste).

Me starting my WIP over again from scratch

This artist-in-residence program for "writers, musicians and visual artists whose work is making a significant contribution to healing" seems exciting and it's in my (relative) neck of the woods. If you apply and get it, let's meet for coffee, because I want to hear about your work.

I want the kind of day when you've been at the beach too long and your skin is full of sun and you somehow end up at a bar & grill and your sunburn makes you kind of cold but hot at the same time and you order a quesadilla and an ice cold beer and there's some guy playing guitar and it's all good.

I'm growing tired of people recommending I use AI in my work when writing for me is a cure for an impulse, an itch I must scratch, a way my soul is able to feel calm enough that I may continue being a human. The people who suggest AI do not know this; they don't have this impulse in them.

Setting off into my own literary weirdness for the day and as usual @tacobellquarterly.org is giving me the advice I need to live más

While there are numerous things to miss about the era of my writing life when I regularly followed food curiosities down rabbit holes and bravely tried new products in the name of informing the people, I am delighted to say I will not be trying Rocket Pop baked beans this Memorial Day.

I ran text created by my human brain through an AI detector yesterday. It came back as 38% AI. I ran it through the same detector again, with no changes made to the text. It came back 0% AI. I share this not to express an opinion about the discourse, but to say that humans are 100% living in hell.

I got a typewriter, and it does not have an exclamation point. It's brought up so many existential questions for me. (!)

In another life I'd leap at this chance, and have a whirlwind experience comparing this beachy existence to the one I've enjoyed as a small-town reporter in ski country. Please, someone, grab this by the horns and live it to the fullest.

Fuck AI. You do it yourself over and over until it feels real. That's the whole point

A project has me reacquainting myself with the art of playwriting, and reader, I love her.

Suddenly wildly into plotting and it is so freeing in its prescriptive nature

Today is a milestone day for me; it's 21 years since I started dating my husband. In celebration of that, here is a piece I wrote about long-term love, and about living a Big Life together. It's from 2022. autofocusbooks.com/mag/a-big-life

How I feel each year while making an extremely simple list of my business expenses during tax season

In honor of spring, here is my once-a-year share of a piece I wrote about driving on VT Route 9 on a day when it felt like, at long last, spring had sprung.

The secret third thing: the way my heart beats when the tendrils of a story coalesce as if by magic, and something new about my world (internal/external) very suddenly makes sense, and whatever's contained in that tiny molecule of sudden clarity will never not make sense again

This conversation had a lot of morsels worth writing down and keeping, particularly the parts about the ever-evolving nature of our creative lives and identities.

This chart also applies to writing fiction, FYI.

From my desk today, I have a view of the sun casting shadows on snow while melting the ice off of a fledgling tree. Last night snow and ice shut down our roads. March is: this.

“That day of ‘solitude’ taught me that…I can also put [my laptop] down, engage with my notebooks, sketch out my plots in colored pencil…and end the day feeling like I was fully productive.” Read @laurenharkawik.bsky.social's writing experience without the pull of technology: at.pw.org/ComputerFree

The reason we have art is because artists' experience of humanity is that they (themselves) must create. You seeing/reading/hearing/loving/experiencing their work is a byproduct, not the point. The point is that for an artist, to be in the mode of creation/breakthrough/holy beauty is to be alive.

X is hiring a creative writing specialist at $40 an hour to make Grok better at writing and a true LOL at the qualifications

I said to someone the other night that, "January felt like it was 10 years long and now February will never end." Reader, when I said this, it was January 28.

My 6th-grade teacher is my best friend’s mom, but I knew my teacher before I knew my bff, so I think of her more as my teacher than I do his mom. Whenever I post about a win, she cheers me on, and it’s just so special. It’s like that 12 y.o. me still has the same team after all these years.

“I could go to the office and spend the day inside without my computer. This option felt, quite honestly, the least logical. What was a workday without my laptop?” Writer Lauren Harkawik forgets her laptop on a mini writing retreat and discovers new paths through creativity. at.pw.org/ComputerFree

I have an essay in the most recent issue of Poets & Writers, on newsstands now. It’s all about a day when I didn’t have my laptop, kept at the work of engaging in creativity anyway, and found all sorts of new pathways into what I call “a productive day.”

If your resolution this year is to support more independent bookstores, hi!👋🏽 We’re Bookshop.org, an ethical alternative to Amazon for buying books online where every purchase supports indie bookstores all over the U.S. 😌📚 (And our CEO has never gone to space, just saying)

A new piece by me is part of today's newly-released edition of Same Faces Collective. I am honored to be in such good company in this gorgeous online volume. www.samefacescollective.com/post/if-i-cl...

My kid has been talking about taking DVDs out from the library like it's special, new, and exciting. It's not what we had with Blockbuster, which was just the norm (the wonderful, lovely norm). It's something much better.

Over the weekend I finally got a chance to watch Will & Harper, which I found to be beautiful, enlightening, poignant, and so warm. I highly recommend it.

One reason I recommend moving to Vermont is that sometimes you get a call from an unknown number and it is a recording of Bernie Sanders inviting you to a telephone town hall.

I like to think my “purpose” is that of a storyteller, and perhaps it is. But strand me on the top of a mountain road in a snowstorm with my kid and it becomes real clear real fast that my purpose is keeping her safe forever and always. (We are home and safe, now).

I'd been excitedly forwarding the email about this class happening again to my writer friends without clicking its link myself, and I now see that my praise of the class is the banner on the landing page 😂 I do indeed recommend this class, for the reasons stated in big bold text at the top!

From my living room this morning, I can see snow on the ski mountain’s trails. Which is obviously the work of Mariah Carey.

Hey artists Just keep posting. Last post didn’t get many likes? Keep posting. Not 100% happy with what you made? Post it. Feel like you aren’t getting anywhere? Keep posting. You never know who will find you and when.

Whenever people complain about the number of folks relying on food stamps, it is worth reminding them that SNAP is, by too large of a degree, a subsidy for corporations that refuse to pay a living wage and their political allies who reject public policy prescriptions to reduce income inequality.

BREAKING: Two men have been arrested in connection with the heist of France's crown jewels from the Louvre Museum in Paris.

I’m reading The Wizard of Oz to my 4 y.o. We’ve just passed the part where Oz has absconded in a balloon lest people find out he’s a humbug, and strangest thing, I keep saying, “ballroom” instead of “balloon.”

During the lit fest, I went to The Humble Mug, a new tea shop in Brattleboro, and witnessed a group of three teens: laptops out, drinking tea and discussing the poetry they were writing. I share this just in case my last post didn't make clear how bursting with joy my writerly heart is, today.

Attended + was inspired by several panels at this weekend's Brattleboro Literary Festival, including a few inside The Stone Church, a venue in what was (obviously) once a church. I wish we could pack in here every Sunday to talk about literature and the art of creating with words. Writer church.

I realize it’s been out for a bit, but I started Anderson Cooper’s podcast about grief yesterday. I’ve already found great comfort in it, both as someone who’s lost people I’ve loved and as someone who is a human continually attempting to best navigate life and its emotions. I highly recommend it.

The absolute joy of being edited and it making your work stronger. I cannot believe how fervently some writers resist this.