Laura’s Notes from the Handbasket

How I Lost My Writing, And Found It Again

    This week, I wrote a short story. It isn’t just any short story. It’s the first piece of fiction I’ve completed in over four years. The words “four years” leave me breathless. In that I nearly passed out when I first realized it had been that long. I started writing fiction about thirty-five …Read More

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Thoughts on Elizabeth Gilbert’s Cancellation of The Snow Forest

  This week, writer Elizabeth Gilbert pulled her upcoming February 2024 novel, THE SNOW FOREST, from publication. In a moving vlog post (I saw it on Instagram), she explained that, over the weekend, she had heard from many devastated readers in Ukraine who could not understand why she would publish a book set in Russia …Read More

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It’s Mother’s Day and I See You

    I hope my mother had friends who told her what a good mother she was. She and her sister were terribly close, and so I suspect she was my mother’s best listener. Not only was my mother also an excellent, empathetic listener, she was a prolific sharer. Once, when I flew in for …Read More

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