The word “awesome” has been tossed around so many times by so many different types of people that it’s become meaningless. Even the word “awful,” which can mean reverential, but rarely does, sounds like the disdainful, pilloried word it has become. Yet both words have their roots in “awe,” an odd-sounding word that has a…
Tag: Iceland
Why Reykjavik Rocked: A City for Writers
Is it strange to visit a place where you’ve never been to before and where you don’t know the language and to feel totally at home? I’ve been living in the New York City burbs now for over a decade and still don’t feel at home, but I travel to Reykjavik for the Iceland Writers…
The Problem With Travel
Two weeks after Iceland, I’m still thinking about Iceland. The land is a mood that follows you. It lingers, like the scent of a campfire coming from your clothes days after the fire has died out. Describing its craggy lava fields, its velvety swaths of green moss, the silence of the mountains that watch over…
How the Writer Sjón Turned An Idiot Into a Fan Girl
This is a story about me being an idiot. Truly. It begins on the living room floor in the home of Halldór Kiljan Laxness, a son of Iceland, a Nobel Prize-winning author, and a guy with great taste in art. And the story ends in the candy aisle of a gas station about a half…
How Eating Waffles Inspired a Trip to See Pigs
This always happens with freelancing: work that actually pays slows down a bit so I turn my attention to non-paying creative writing pursuits, like this blog and a manuscript for a novel. Then work that actually pays shows up in my inbox (and for that I am very grateful if any of my editors are…