Websites are wonderful for personal writing. Some people call them “blogs.” I don’t find that to be a very attractive word. It sounds more like an insult, “you dirty, no-good blog, you.”
My writing fits into a few specific sub-genres:
Not relying on a rigid, chronological plot, my lyric essays are a bit like poems or musical arrangements. They use a physical present as a springboard to leap across time and geography into memories. I rely on intuition, imagery, and emotional resonance to tie distinct moments together rather than a traditional “storyline.”
Because they are short, self-contained pieces that focus on singular moments of insight, they are often called Flash Nonfiction or vignettes (usually under 1,000 words). I try to capture a fleeting slice of life—a vignette—and then shape it until it reflects something universal about aging, memory, or human connection.
Unlike a full-length autobiography that would try to explain my entire life from my birth to the present, the meditative memoir pieces take fragments of the past and explore them. They often use the perspective of time (I am an old man now, after all) to look back at events of my youth not with regret, but with respect and perspective.
In writing, a conceit isn’t an insult or a character flaw; it’s a device, a tool. A conceit is an elaborate, extended metaphor that I can use to link two very different things together in a hopefully surprising and clever way.
They are demanding forms of writing because I have to make every single word count, but when I do them well, the pieces have the sudden, striking impact of the drums in “Dancing with Jeffrey Gibson. They “arrive instantly.”
Here are a few pieces of mine (alphabetical):
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I think it’s a great title, “Everyone Is Stupid in Love,” don’t you?
In The Before and In The After
One Story About Oscar That Didn’t Make It Into Rick’s Book
The Surgeon General’s Warning
“This is not a drill”
Why I’m talking about the shape of raindrops instead of what’s going on in the US right now
