I am going to do a series of posts over the next few months on how to be a productive writer–not necessarily to write books upon books, but to have a steady outpouring of creative work despite the busy demands of life (for me, working online + homeschooling + 5 kids at home, including a baby).

If you have any questions about productivity in writing, please leave them here (or email me), and I’ll make sure to cover them!

In fiction:
The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
(I plan to read this entire series–it is magical)

In nonfiction:
Psalms for Trials by Lindsey Tollefson
(this is a reread, but intensely helpful)

In poetry:
Some Glad Morning by Barbara Crooker
the latest issue of Dappled Things
(I’ve loved poets lately who mix the mystery of God with the everyday of domesticity and the natural world, and Barbara Crooker does that so well)

What are you reading right now?

Biking Cades Cove, Tennessee, with My Husband, Seven Years Married

Last week, a man dislocated
both shoulders, bashed his head
on the asphalt loop that heaves
its hills through this settler’s valley.

The park road is blocked off, vacationing
bikers lined up for bikes rented by the hour,
with the duct-tape and split seam seats
of anything without a single owner,
never truly loved.

It isn’t the speed, but the curves
taken at such a speed,
the park volunteers warn us.

On the narrow road, we glide between
families, past cherry trees
ripped apart by black bears foraging,
past a church for each denomination.
When the hills grow too steep,
we walk them together.

Developers carved out the settler’s
cabins from their recesses in the forest
into the blonde grasses of the fields.
Floorboards are worn as stones.
Surrounding signs ask us to refrain
from carving our names.

The white clapboard Primitive Baptist
church hosts deer grazing in the modest
cemetery out back, stepping more elegant
than we do, ghosts among the markers.

from Threshing Floor (Jacar Press)