January 2012
12 posts
Writer's retreat in our guest room, anyone? We're... →
Jan 27th
Today my partners and I brought our TMI Project monologue workshop to an awesome LBGTQ teen conference. Julie started things off with “Football Princess,” her awesome and hilarious monologue about her gender identity. Then she did some improv exercises with the kids, and I was amazed at how they just jumped right in - so different from the adults we work with, who tend to be so timid...
Jan 14th
2 notes
Permanent Brain Damage
So here’s another weird thing: I live two doors down from the post office. Because they don’t deliver mail to Main Street (long story), I have to have a P.O. box and pick up my mail every day. Sometimes I stop there in the car, on my way home from errands, especially when it’s cold out. I can’t tell you how many of those times I then forget I drove there, and walk the two...
Jan 12th
2 notes
Jan 11th
10 notes
"Somehow you wind up on the topic of his wife's... →
No, seriously - do not read this if you are related to me in any way.
Jan 10th
2 notes
1 tag
In Which I Have My First Piece on This...
Okay, but please don’t read this if you are at all related to me? Thanks!
Jan 10th
4 notes
Jan 6th
1 tag
Jan 6th
1 note
Jan 5th
2 notes
1 tag
Here’s something weird: I lately can’t find a place in my house that feels comfortable for writing. I have a whole office upstairs - second biggest room in the house - but I haven’t been able to station myself there for some time. I may have let it get too messy, and I’m not up for the nine million little decisions about what to keep, what to throw away, what to put where,...
Jan 5th
2 notes
A Friday night in 1987. I am a senior in college. My father calls around 9:30 pm. Dad: What are you doing? Me: Getting ready to meet my friends at a bar. Dad: Oy. Me: What? Dad: JENNIFER LEVIN WENT TO A BAR.
Jan 3rd
1 note
The Same Situation
I wrote some more about my conversation with Glory Goes and Gets Some author Emily Carter for the Emily Books blog. emilybooks: By Sari Botton I got a nice email from Emily (Gould) the other day about my conversation with Emily Carter, published as part of a series I write for The Rumpus. She said she wished the piece had been longer, and I immediately regretted two choices I had...
Jan 2nd
31 notes
December 2011
8 posts
3 tags
Dec 31st
6 notes
Me: So, you’re giving me permission to write these things? Shrink: No. I’m PRESCRIBING IT.
Dec 30th
3 notes
Dec 28th
2 notes
2 tags
Dec 22nd
1 note
4 tags
Dec 22nd
Dec 21st
15 notes
5 tags
Dec 21st
6 notes
3 tags
Dec 14th
2 notes
November 2011
5 posts
3 tags
I typically find holidays hard, but this year I’m in a better place. While not exactly ecstatic, I’m in sort of a go-with-the-flow mood that feels new. Something has shifted in me; I’ve somehow acquired a detached acceptance and compassion for my family. Granted, my dad and I are in a little bit of a fight about vitamins, but that’s nothing compared to other things...
Nov 23rd
Nov 21st
3 tags
Nov 21st
Nov 20th
4 notes
Nov 16th
35 notes
October 2011
1 post
2 tags
Greetings from the land of "yes." →
Here’s something pretty meta: a Rumpus essay that includes, among other things, an acknowledgment that just about no one reads this blog.
Oct 5th
11 notes
September 2011
3 posts
2 tags
Anyone got a super-brave memoir/memoirist to recommend for my Conversations With Writers Braver Than Me series on The Rumpus? Like seriously ballsy. Thanks in avance.
Sep 28th
Birthday Open House Sat 10/1
I want to have a low-maintenance open house here for my b-day Saturday night,10/1, but I am not in the mood to create a FB event and invite people one-by-one. Also, last year I did that and there was a glitch, so some people didn’t receive it and they got mad at me. So can I just say right here: Come over Saturday night any time after 8? Bring some drink or snack to share. And spread the...
Sep 27th
3 tags
Write Like a Motherf*cker virtual writers' group... →
The other day, Elissa Bassist posted on FB asking if anyone wanted to commit to writing during the same hour she was going to be shutting off the internet and stringing words together. I said I was busy cleaning the rotting food smell out of my house, post-Irene, but why not start a FB page where others could make similar writing pacts at any given time, or even just state specific writing...
Sep 7th
4 notes
August 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Aug 25th
“By writing this book in the old-fashioned first person singular, I have...”
– David Ogilvy, “Confessions of an Advertising Man”
Aug 1st
2 notes
July 2011
1 post
3 tags
Jul 13th
June 2011
2 posts
Great interview w/ Nick Flynn (which I swear I'd... →
Jun 6th
1 tag
Dear New York Times Dining and Styles Sections, While it is not very nice of you to reject my pitches about the latest in gluten-free baking - because “GF has been done to death” - only to turn around and BOTH run huge front-page articles about it IN THE SAME WEEK, I want to thank you for making me realize, finally, with 100 percent certainty that I don’t want to be that...
Jun 6th
May 2011
5 posts
davidquigg asked: Hi. This will contain unsolicited advice. So if you'd rather not get that from a stranger, please go ahead and delete it without reading more.

I will keep this short since I bet you have heard some version of this before. Basically, I just want to be sure you realize that your "Conversations With Writers Braver Than Me" series is functionally equivalent to writing a...
May 20th
4 tags
May 18th
May 17th
133 notes
I had an op-ed in yesterday’s Daily News. I will have you know I did NOT write the horrible headline. (My suggestion was, “Waiting to Inhale.”) That headline and little edits throughout the piece made me sound a lot madder than I am - just really bothered (and frequently suffocated). I am mostly laughing about this.
May 16th
Third draft of essay completed. Suck it, writer’s block.
May 4th
2 notes
April 2011
8 posts
1 tag
Writer’s block, you are not winning today. I finished a first-draft of an essay, longhand. Who cares if it’s any good? I got it done. (Curtsies.)
Apr 26th
4 tags
Three cups of memoir
This week I came across three very recommendable essays about memoir - all of them touching on the imperfect nature of memory. Memoirist Marion Winik’s piece in the L.A. Times may have further convinced me I should wait until certain people in my life are deceased before I write about them – so that it will be “no problem!” Lorrie Moore’s essay in The New York Review of...
Apr 22nd
3 tags
WatchWatch
What do I get out of repeatedly belting “Free Man in Paris” (um, a song about David Geffen sung from his perspective?) while driving?? I’ll attempt to solve this and other mysteries in my monologue, “Confessions of a Closet Vocalist,” my contribution to a show called “TMI” May 6th & 7th at the Shadowland Theatre in Ellenville, NY. (If you’re in...
Apr 20th
http://choiresicha.com/post/4605716788 →
choire: I love the iPhone “Notes” I’ve Written To Myself Over The Past Year Or So Whose Motivations Are Lost To The Sands of Time game. Here are ten of mine. (During some of which I apparently fell back asleep while writing?) • Hezbollah flag says in Arabic “watch out Jews we’re coming for you” — rally… 1. AFGo - another fucking growth opportunity. 2. Secrets of six-figure women Barbara...
Apr 15th
Don't go by me
So, regarding my “ludditian” lament over the progressive disappearance of print, and my occasional preference for a hard copy in my hands…I should point out that I am probably not the best judge of what will work for *The Future* nor the most flexible adaptor. Case in point: In the summer of 1993, when I was on the tall end of 27, I went on a misbegotten date with the then...
Apr 11th
1 tag
Apr 6th
How Do You Get Unblocked? - The Rumpus.net →
So, what is your antidote to writer’s block??
Apr 4th
2 notes
3 tags
Word processing - with pen and paper
Last week someone called me a Luddite. Considering that I have two blogs, a column on The Rumpus, a twitter account, a borderline unhealthy attachment to my iPhone and a possibly waning addiction to Facebook, I’m not sure the label fits. (I also happen to be married to an Apple tech.) But the guy is on to something. There is my lingering conflict over the gradual disappearance of print....
Apr 4th
14 notes
March 2011
7 posts
2 tags
Ghostwriter's lament
A memoir I wrote just came out in paperback. As the hardcover edition did last year, it will probably hit the New York Times Bestseller list, not because it is so good (it’s really not that good, and I am not being modest), but because of who the “author” is. I am not the “author.” I am the ghostwriter. I kind of don’t care. But it is just all a little…...
Mar 30th
3 tags
Update: "Lives," er, still lives
Okay, disregard my earlier post. I just heard positive news back from John Glassie, the editor of “Lives.” He writes: Lives still exists, though it won’t run every week. There’s a Lives in this coming Sunday’s magazine. 
Mar 28th
3 tags
R.I.P. "Lives" Column?
Last week I lamented the diminishing number of print venues for personal essays. Then yesterday I realized this Sunday’s edition of The New York Times Magazine was the second in a row in which the “Lives” column was replaced with a short feature called “Read More,” which is not a first-person piece. NYT Picker noticed, too. By the looks of it, the column appears to...
Mar 28th
6 notes