Author: jen

  • revolution into a new year

    One of the nice things about having kept an online journal back in ye old golden days of the internet, when we were still making fun of the word “blog,” (she says in a wavering ye old golden girls RIP Betty White voice), is that I had a record, of sorts, of my life. Fully…

  • rolling forward

    rolling forward

    When I finish this manuscript, I’m going to go roller skating. We bought the roller skates a month ago? A couple of months ago. Maybe a few months ago? There’s a roller skate club in town, which is one hundred percent the most delightful thing I’ve ever heard. A club, for roller skating. Roller skaters,…

  • habit forming

    habit forming

    What happens when you get depressed – and it happens whether you’re a little depressed and struggling or whether you’re sunk in that pit of cold water with a boulder on your chest – is that you can’t. You can’t, and you care less and less that you can’t. Most of what you can’t do…

  • a very Nancy holiday

    a very Nancy holiday

    Every year we swear we’re going to do holiday things and be festive and every year on December 24, the communal everything is closed and we are all tearing festive paper off deep fryers and socks and bubble bath scented like a berry that doesn’t actually have a scent, or a dream you once had…

  • how many fun size candy bars can i fit in my cheeks

    how many fun size candy bars can i fit in my cheeks

    My mother, in her housecoat on a Sunday. She is trying to quit smoking. She tears open a package of plain M&Ms and pours them into her pocket, and it’s an ingenious idea. Candy on your person, for any kind of emergency that occurs—nicotine craving or chocolate urge, need for candy or desperate desire to…

  • weather outside comma frightful

    weather outside comma frightful

    There are outdoorsy folk, but those folk are wrong. We invented shelters to be sheltered in and I feel like it is deeply morally wrong and fucked up that some people do not have them (true), and further that if you have one, voluntarily leaving it is a step back, evolutionarily speaking (questionable, fine). Ask…

  • the dog that saved my life

    the dog that saved my life

    Some years ago I promised my dog, name of Crom and much less small than he used to be, that I would stay alive for him. The thinking behind the promise being that he would like for me to stay alive because he is fond of me, his human mother and the person who purchases…

  • very important writing advice by me, jen

    very important writing advice by me, jen

    First: Don’t daydream about being famous, not when you’re still writing. Write your story pretending like that’s not even a possibility, and then fling it away from you. Send it into the world and pretend it never happened. Otherwise, you won’t get through any of the next bits. The ones with where you’re at all…

  • love letter

    love letter

    What do you get the girl who saved your life? I chose a trip to Costa Rica, when an unexpected royalty check came. And I chose Alajuela, deep in the countryside where rolling, dwarf-tree spotted hills gave way to old-growth rainforest. A tree house, in the middle of a hot springs resort. I didn’t explain…

  • present perfect

    present perfect

    I spent more than half my life hating myself. That’s—a lot of years. That is so much hate. That is so much time wasted and so much time lost. I was fat, and I knew that people noticed my size. I knew they made judgments about me, about my body. And when I was told…