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Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, UK, on a cold January morning.

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.

When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored.

We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least c…

Four days a week the posts on

are offered for free. On Thursdays, I have writing prompts as a perk for paid subscribers. I’m a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter of memoirs who has taught memoir writing in MFA programs and at Catapult. My prompts are good! memoirland.substack.com…

It’s this week’s writing prompt, for paid subscribers…

The first snowdrops in the snow

How cheer-bringing this is. And awe-inspiring - every year I wonder how these tiny little flowers have decided that the coldest, grimmest times are the times for them. So I checked my trusty Englishman’s Flora by Geoffrey Grigson (you can see from its state that I’ve referred to it over a lifetime - anyone …

The Shaman and the Web
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