In 2019 I bought a new dining room table. At the time I bought it mostly to make it easier to host Creative Nights, something I used to hold at my house every other Friday night, for a number of creatively inclined co-worker friends. These friends would gather and talk and drink and write and …
Mistakes
I shouldn't be grouchy about responding to any of these prompts, because I wrote many of them, and I think I wrote this one (Andrea [my Writerly partner-in-crime] -- please correct me if I'm wrong. And if so, you're in trouble. jk, jk). I don't like making mistakes. I spent last night thinking about (worrying, …
Trading a Toothpick for a Pick Axe
To talk about what I would do if I knew I could not fail is to try to sort out the crossover point between tenable and untenable challenge, between manageable and unmanageable risk, and identify that thing which is just on the other side of the line which I desperately want. Relatedly, I like to …
Closed Room
How do you write about something you don't want to talk about? Except, you DO desperately want to talk about it. Because not talking about it means you have barred the door to a room of your life. Barred the door and tried to walk away and forget about it. But-- Say the door you …
Memory and Change
Think Kit, Day Two! Still excited. Still blogging on not my computer. Today's prompt is straightforward: I am to tell you about a time this year that I changed my mind. Possible problem: I don't change my mind! (Not publicly. Not in a way I'd ever admit to. I'd find a way to back into …
Lone Wolf–Or Not
I don't really know what I want to write about tonight. Part of me was hoping that if I showed up here, in this space, that something would come out of me--like, that the act of being here would remind me of who I am and what I want to say to all of you …
Walking
The summer after my sophomore year of college, I went home. That seems unremarkable to say, but the previous summer, I had gone home, but for only the briefest moment, and only so that I could gather up my pertinent belongings and depart again. Not to return to college but to head to Walcamp in Illinois …
Reminders and Restarts
It has been a week of rejuvenation, and this makes sense, if we are taking our hint from the natural world. My garden has been fluffing itself up with coral bell, columbine, butterfly bush, Russian sage, yarrow--they are filling out and filling up their respective beds. A half-dead azalea bush that I bought for something like …
Why I Write Creative Nonfiction
Of all the types of writing I could take on, why creative nonfiction? Here's how I came to it. When, during the second semester of my first year of grad school at IUPUI, I landed in my first ever creative nonfiction writing class, I was only months from having given birth to my first child, …
Drug Salesmen
"I'm not a drug salesman. I'm a writer." "What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman?" --Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
Jackie Lutzke 