We’ve had a beautiful weekend here in Columbus, Ohio. Plenty of sunshine and temperatures approaching 70. The trees are almost bare now; only a few are being stubborn and refusing to let their red leaves fall to the ground. It was the perfect sort of weekend for the writing assignment I gave my advanced undergraduate…

In light of all the controversy lately involving the manipulation of facts in creative nonfiction, I’ve come up with a writing exercise to force us to stay true to documented information and to use it for the exploration of material in which we have a personal stake, material we’ll come at slantwise, much in the…

The results for the second clinical study concerning PFO (patent foreman ovulae) closure are in. If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll recall that the doctors think I have a PFO, a hole between the atria of my heart that was supposed to close at birth but didn’t. The first clinical study that weighed the…

It’s a glorious Indian Summer day here in Columbus, Ohio, and I’m giving thanks for the twenty minutes of running that I did this morning in the midst of my forty-minute walk. As many of you know, I’m a month into recovery from a stroke. To catch you up to speed in case you didn’t…

This week’s post comes from my contribution to the Dinty Moore-edited, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction. I don’t recall why, but at the time Dinty asked me for a contribution, I was pondering issues of voice, possibly because flash nonfiction is often voice-driven, or at least it is for me.…

My family doctor tells me I’m doing great a little over three weeks after my stroke. She says I can go back to teaching. I confess that I already have. I taught my advanced undergraduate creative nonfiction workshop last night, I tell her, a three-hour class. She wants to know whether it felt comfortable to…

Comments from the Convalescent:  When I began this convalescence, I envisioned catching up on books I’ve been wanting to read in between naps. What I’ve learned, though, is that restoration is hard work. First come the sleepless nights when the anxiety of what might happen with my next breath overwhelms me. Then comes the depression…

CEREBRAL ARTERY OCCLUSION, UNSPECIFIED; WITH CEREBRAL INFARCTION The language of stroke. The language of my stroke. The doctors can’t pinpoint the exact cause, but they have a culprit under surveillance: a patent foramen ovale. When all of us are in the womb, there’s a natural opening between the left and right atria of the heart.…

I designed a new writing exercise for my MFA creative nonfiction workshop last week, and contrary to what a good teacher should have done (stating the objective of the exercise before leading the students through it) I purposely eliminated that step and jumped right in. I didn’t want the students to write toward an objective,…

This morning, my Facebook friend, Susan Cushman (check out her blog, “(Not) Writing on Wednesdays” at http://susancushman.com/blog-pen-palette/), made me aware of a story she found on another blog, “HighRoadpost” by Lisa Joiner (http://highroadpost.com/). It’s the story of a book that Lisa found in the women’s room at LAX on a day when she and her…