Category Archives: Writing

Mar 27 2018

You Need to Go to the Northern California Writers’ Retreat

Posted by Travels & Experiences, Writing 5 Comments
You Need to Go to the Northern California Writers’ Retreat

If I’m going to leave my babies for five whole days, it had better be for an absolutely perfect reason.

…Okay, let’s get real: this mama hasn’t slept solo in years. So when I discovered the Northern California Writers’ Retreat involved several consecutive evenings without diapers or nightmares or snoring, I thought, I do not even remember what that’s like and also SIGN ME UP IMMEDIATELY. My husband is always the one who gets to gallivant around the world for work, and I (desperately) wanted to know what a business trip felt like, too.

I first heard about the opportunity a couple years ago at the San Francisco Writers Conference, where I met Heather Lazare, one of the retreat’s co-founders — she’s an independent editor who’s worked at some baller places in New York, and I’ve been creepily stalking the submission guidelines ever since. The retreat is clearly gaining steam; there were more than five times the number of submissions this year than when it launched in 2016. Finally, once Baby B was weaned and fully into toddlerhood, I gave it a shot: twenty pages. Crossed fingers and toes. Continue reading →

Jan 18 2018

Is There Room for Triviality in a World Like This?

Posted by Musings & Misc., Writing 8 Comments
Is There Room for Triviality in a World Like This?

I’ve battled an epic case of writer’s block these last several months. It’s not that I don’t have ideas — I do, dozens of them, phrases strung together into haphazard lists on my phone and in the notebooks littering my house. It’s that none of them seem important enough.

Facebook and Instagram and Twitter teem with unspeakable tragedies, news of unrest, and political platitudes. Where social media was once a scrolling stream of family photos and status updates, its purpose now has been emphatically redefined: effect change. If you’re going to speak, write, wear, or think anything, you’d better be making a statement.

This is such a vital and honorable intention.

Obviously, the method itself has flaws. People — LOTS of them, people you personally know — freely admit to blocking and unfollowing friends who post articles that don’t align with their beliefs or perspectives that make them uncomfortable. This furthers the divide, of course, since now those people are surrounding themselves with carefully curated information that will only serve to bolster their own preexisting viewpoint. Continue reading →

Dec 31 2017

The Stuff You Actually Wanted to Know, 2017 Edition

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The Stuff You Actually Wanted to Know, 2017 Edition

It’s that time again: the post where I smuggle you behind the scenes of my blog so you can peek at the stuff other people are Googling.

I’m always fascinated by the search terms that bring traffic to this site, and they seem to get more interesting — and more extensive — every year. In 2017, almost every single one had to do with teaching, which sort of baffles me: I’ve only published two posts (maybe three, if you count this one) that are teaching-specific. But this post from last April continues to generate the most visits by far, with somewhere between 500 and 1000 unique views each week.

Usually I share the top 10 searches, but this year I’ll show you the ones I found most captivating. Continue reading →

Jan 26 2017

A Magical Tale of a Photo Fail

Posted by Musings & Misc., Writing 7 Comments
A Magical Tale of a Photo Fail

A couple days ago I published a post called “The Space Between Baby and Boy” (which was semi-uncharacteristically sentimental, I know, but sometimes the sappy side of me crawls out from its miniature cave and doesn’t know what to do with itself).

The baby is growing up. It’s rocking my world a little bit.

So I poured it all out and then sat down to choose a featured image — you know, the picture that accompanies the post when someone shares it on social media. And I browsed for a minute, but then I thought, Meh, I’m getting sort of tired of using stock photos. Continue reading →

Dec 31 2016

The Stuff You Actually Wanted to Know, 2016 Edition

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The Stuff You Actually Wanted to Know, 2016 Edition

All year long, I keep a list of the search terms that bring people to my site because I find it wildly fascinating. When I did this in 2015, my blog was just a tiny fledgling, so there weren’t a whole lot of them — most traffic came from friends and family who intentionally bookmarked the homepage and occasionally checked back for updates.

This year, “organic” traffic has surged by comparison, so this list is much more expansive. It’s always a trip to see exactly how people wind up here, especially when it’s fairly obvious they were looking for something else. While some of these search terms make a whole lot more sense than last year’s, I’m often still baffled by (and grateful for) Google’s algorithm (thanks for sending me some peeps, Google!).

Here are the top 10 searches that brought you to MichiforniaGirl in 2016, copied exactly the way they were typed into Google search. Continue reading →