Blog

The Center blog is teeming with tips and inspiration for starting and maintaining your writing practice.

Writing about Percy is like trying to write about magic, or grace, or river waters flowing through my fingers.
The tops of the chocolate pudding have developed a rubbery layer, as they will, when they cool. That rubbery layer is my favorite part...
When I write in my journal, every morning, with coffee, sometimes the writing heats up, feels like it’s about to deliver something...
It lives inside me, no one but myself to corroborate what I saw. Until now, when at last I have committed that moment to the page...
Someone’s singing in the basement. Annie hears it through the floor and feels it in her feet when she puts them on the floor to pull on her slippers...
...the progression of Lillian’s dementia is there, just outside, and I have to encounter this slow, arduous and mysterious passage. Lillian was a painter, as I am.
In her 58th post, Helena marvels at her late summer garden and shares some of her students' publications.
In her 57th post, Helena grapples first with this column’s deadline, then with a transformative experience of both grief and love.
In her 56th post, Helena shares an exercise on building characters, along with memories of her beloved sister.
In her 55th post, Helena offers the conclusion of the continuation of a scene from her beloved young adult novel, Ruthie Pincus of Brooklyn.