Commuter
My commute to work takes an hour and twenty minutes, one way. Downhill walk, a train ride, a bus ride, and finally, a short walk into the campus. Crazy, I know. But I don’t hate it, which is even crazier. … Continue reading Commuter
Author: Leah Ranada
Of Literary Spies and Real-Life Selves
For some reason, spy novels are finding their way in my have-read list. More recent titles, not John le Carré classics. Last week, for instance, I finished Lauren Wilkinson’s American Spy which was just published last February. Pausing here to … Continue reading Of Literary Spies and Real-Life Selves
Morning Person
I’m a morning person. It’s by habit, no, compulsion. Go back to sleep, the boyfriend urges when I stir on a weekend morn, but the wheels are already turning. He’s drifted off by the time my feet find the slippers … Continue reading Morning Person
The Bachelorette Pad, Revisited
It was 2011 and I was in my mid-twenties. I still lived with my mom and siblings being from a culture where it’s quite common for adult children to live with their parents until they married. But we are not … Continue reading The Bachelorette Pad, Revisited
Twenty-nineteen, warmed up
I woke up one day to find myself living in a surreal-sounding year called two-thousand-nineteen, working three jobs. Three jobs! There’s definitely truth to that saying that if you wanted to make God laugh, tell him your plans. I have … Continue reading Twenty-nineteen, warmed up
Shorts
Keeping to short forms these days. Flash fiction, poetry, something in between. I got busy during the summer moving to another apartment. This was followed by a two-week stay in New York City where I had planned to luxuriate in daily writing sessions. Writing I did, but it wasn’t as productive as planned. Something about tight spaces, places to be explored, heat and humidity. Thought I could rally the necessary discipline to power through and produce a first draft by the end of 2018. No dice. I’m not a trained poet, but here I am trying. Lessons might be in … Continue reading Shorts
New and Old
New: Novel-in-progress. I smile as I write this because there isn’t a word of it written down. It’s all in the head at the moment. I’m taking a breezier approach with this one, not planning the chapters in advance, letting characters take shape and decide the course of things. I know their faces, their jobs. I feel their emptiness, know how to break their hearts. Someday I’ll give them life in pages. Old: Short story about a boy with a questionable gift. A beast, this one. It’s a story I truly want to tell, but why, oh why, is it … Continue reading New and Old
Lightness of a Beginning
What a year! Finished the novel–took me five years. It’s out there, looking for a home away from its fussy creator. Whether it gets published or not, it’s finished and I’m happy with what I accomplished. Writing it has definitely taught me a lot. Ideas for the next novel swim in my head. It’s just a matter of spotting the one that moves slower than the rest, the one fat with questions and worthy to be dissected for the next couple of years or so. Writing life aside, older sister got married last month. We were so busy with the … Continue reading Lightness of a Beginning
Completion
Hand-sewn dining chair slipcovers—two sets of four pieces. Beef borsch (traditional recipe). Cleaned the gunk off the window ridges. Banana-chocolate chip bread, cottage cheese cake, and other baked experiments. Framed V’s oil painting and found a place for it alongside other photos and wall decorations. These are things I finished in the course of finishing a novel. They distract but they don’t derail. If anything, they are necessary (imagine looking past your laptop and noticing mud lacing your windowpanes). They are chores and passing whims; I am not built for devoting life to domestic perfection. Believe me when I … Continue reading Completion
Writing Weary…Again
Still revising the same story I mentioned last March. A piece drafted two years ago. Short stories are sly and merciless like that, quick to consume but take forever to create. Come on, tell me something new, I beg the lines as I do yet another reread. Our relationship is akin to that of a frustrated mother and her difficult child (I guess the adjectives could be flipped). I believe so much in this story, it’s something that is meant to be told; I won’t let it languish in the drawer of aborted drafts. There was a time when I … Continue reading Writing Weary…Again
