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A letter to Jack, on your second birthday | The Beanstalk

https://ourbeanstalk.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/a-letter-to-jack-on-your-second-birthday

What is The Beanstalk? Record of a girl, a writer, a family and an adventure. A letter to Jack, on your second birthday. Today we were in the car discussing the possibility of moving. We drove by a house for sale over in another corner of our neighborhood and you observed it from all angles as I drove by slowly, made a U-turn, drove by again, turned down a side street to check out the backyard. I said. What do you think, bud? Should we buy it? You just looked out the window. I used to go into your room a...

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A recurring dream. | The Beanstalk

https://ourbeanstalk.wordpress.com/2015/04/29/a-recurring-dream

What is The Beanstalk? Record of a girl, a writer, a family and an adventure. I didn’t watch the. I have a new recurring dream. It isn’t actually the same scene over and over, but it has this same element: I am trying to run, but I can’t make my legs move. I’m telling myself,. But I can’t pick up my damn feet! I can surely catch it. But then my feet aren’t connected to the firing synapses in my brain. My body disobeys. I have no control, and I think. I might as well be a corpse. I begin to unfold my mind...

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What it feels like. | The Beanstalk

https://ourbeanstalk.wordpress.com/2015/08/09/what-it-feels-like

What is The Beanstalk? Record of a girl, a writer, a family and an adventure. What it feels like. Friday, August 7, 2015 was publication day, when my first completed novel. Within the Walled City. I looked at out at our street, unmoving at three o’clock, the wind is rustling in the trees. I could hear cars passing by steadily on the busier cross road, the motion of cicadas in the trees. No fanfare. Why should there be? Well, here it is. I thought. And really, that was it. Writing fiction, Stephen King sa...

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Christmas Eve | The Beanstalk

https://ourbeanstalk.wordpress.com/2014/12/24/christmas-eve

What is The Beanstalk? Record of a girl, a writer, a family and an adventure. 8221; and then I sit down and think of how I would begin and I’m at a loss. However, being that it’s Christmas, a day, a season that deserves to be mentioned in the course of general life commentary, I’m going to try. This month, in an effort to get my mind into the proper Christmas spirit, that is, thinking about Christ and his birth and not just wrapping and garland, I read a great deal of Frederick Buechner. In his book.

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Goodbye to this sweet, old house. | The Beanstalk

https://ourbeanstalk.wordpress.com/2015/05/24/goodbye-to-this-sweet-old-house

What is The Beanstalk? Record of a girl, a writer, a family and an adventure. Goodbye to this sweet, old house. There was the way Sidney couldn’t walk on the floors when she was a puppy, so she’d slide around on her belly like a snake, always trying to gain traction. There was the morning we found out after a sad, sad year of no’s that we’d have a baby, and I ran in and jumped on top of Mark at 5:30 in the morning, hurling him out of dead sleep, into joy! It wasn’t just five years, it was. May 24, 2015.

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Dear Mark, | The Beanstalk

https://ourbeanstalk.wordpress.com/2014/11/21/dear-mark

What is The Beanstalk? Record of a girl, a writer, a family and an adventure. Let me tell you about the best thing you’ve given me. I was out on a Monday night. I came home and you weren’t in the living room watching television or studying. I said, Mark? And heard you call out from the back of the house. I came to find you. The nook was empty except for my desk, the area rug from outside our bedroom, and the yellow paisley chair I love. Where was all the junk? Thank you for the nook. I love you,. Fill in...

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What editing a novel is like. | The Beanstalk

https://ourbeanstalk.wordpress.com/2014/08/15/what-editing-a-novel-is-like

What is The Beanstalk? Record of a girl, a writer, a family and an adventure. What editing a novel is like. The first time I finished a first draft of a short novel, I printed it, punched it with three holes, and purchased a beautiful binder for the pages. I wrote the title on the spine, along with my name. I made a title page with a dedication! I was nineteen years old, so green you could have cut me open to find flexible, live tree marrow. That is as far as that story ever went. In January of this year...