Category: Writing
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Fleeting thoughts: Words, words, words
I found a spare dictionary at work last week and gleefully took it home, and now it’s displayed at the very top of my bookshelf. If I have to pick an odd hobby for when I’m old and curmudgeon, and when all I have left in life are inanimate objects, I would choose to collect…
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Why You Write
Originally posted on Causeway Lit: Written by: Loan Le – Fiction Section Editor So, here you are. You have turned down invitations to parties and happy hours, because you cannot socialize when you have a character in your mind, her voice echoing like a message over a PA system in an empty hallway. You have…
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I didn’t know how much I needed this . . .
I didn’t know how much I needed my MFA retreat until I arrived on Ender’s Island on July 15, sat down under the gazebo facing the Long Island Sound, and heard only this: Last winter was cold on the island. We had spent most nights lounging in the common rooms, dressed in layers of sweatpants and…
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On Static, or Writer’s Block
I just handed in my first MFA packet to my mentor, and I thought I’d feel relieved after that. After all, I’d spent many hours muttering about my characters, plot, and language. I’d pressed the BACKSPACE tab so many times that I thought it’d be broken by now. On the left side of my bed…
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What happens when there’s a sick passenger
The simultaneous turn of heads compels you to pause your music. You were lost in your own world before, hypnotized by chaotic rhythms that get you through the morning commute. You look left when you see synchronized movement and notice, a couple of seats away, a man on the ground. He is still. You look…
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HSR, High School Reunion, Holy Shit Really.
When a Facebook invite to my five-year high school reunion popped up on my phone, my reaction was not one of excitement but one of mortification. Oh god, the memories. Oh god, TENACIOUS 10. Like a girl’s menstruation cycle on its second day, the remembrance of struggling with inadequacy and anonymity, of unspoken crushes, of…
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That time I took a Modern and Contemporary Dance course
I enrolled in Modern and Contemporary Dance. Cue the initial stages of awkwardness, as I recalled early childhood memories of dance classes (tap, jazz, and hip hop) with Miss Beverley, courtesy of Waterbury Park and Recreation: the horror of doing solos, the feeling of utter failure as my clumsy body tried to mirror my teachers’…
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A True Story, Part 1
A True Story W. sits alone at a table near the kitchen, and the flurry of cooks, French expletives, pots and pans in the background brings him and his stillness into sharp focus. Our eyes meet and I smother the pinprick shock I feel. I can see, even from my spot, the curl of his…
Loan Le 