Tiber Island

In the summer of 2021 I decided not to take yet another fiction class. Instead, I took “Essay and Opinion Writing 1” from Gotham Writers Workshop. Homework for Week 4 was to write a description of a place that is strong in your memory. For me, that is the island in the middle of the Tiber …

Fresh mown grass

In the summer of 2021, I decided not to take yet another fiction class. Instead, I took "Essay and Opinion Writing 1" from Gotham Writers Workshop. Homework for Week 7 was to write a personal essay. We were supposed to take a story from today's news and turn it into an essay with a moral …

Stop and See Your Grandfather

Homework 7 was to describe a scene where the description of the location impacts the emotion of the story. This is an autobiographical moment that sticks in my head to this day.  In college, I had gone with friends to a cabin that belonged to one of their families in Tahoe.  When my father found …

Smoothing Sand

The point of this assignment was to write a short "slice of life" passage about a single character. No big plot, bug some conflict and some sort of change in the character by the end. Spring had arrived and with it the annual gathering that was the Olbardra Pharmaceutical Sciences Picnic. An event that Joe …

From my Corner

This was a homework assignment on creating an unreliable narrator. I wrote it while sitting in the corner of my local coffee place... This is my corner. My chair and my table. This is where I always sit. The gang expects to find me here. Especially Sandi. At least on Tuesdays and Thursdays. After work, …