Nora Holzinger

By now, thousands of people have seen my article, The Artist’s Way is Elitist Trash . In it I critique the classic book by creativity guru Julia Cameron. The article got a lot more attention (and hate comments) than I anticipated, but I stand by everything I wrote. Well just a few months ago, at a charity book store in Silver City, New Mexico, I happened upon a copy of Writing Down the Bones (1986) by Natalie Goldberg, for a sensible $2. I had never heard of this book before, but for $2 I was willing to risk it.  I took the book back to the strawbale cabin I was renting at the edge of the Gila Wilderness and sat in the warmth of the late-winter sun and read. I read and read and finished the book, and then I turned back to page one and read it a second time. At this point, I think I’ve read this book four or five times. Part writing/creativity book and part Zen meditation guide, this slim volume teaches writing as a kind of meditative practice, a practice that can produce quality,...

  We met way back in middle school. He was an awkward, gay, diplomat’s kid with a name Americans couldn’t pronounce. I was an equally awkward, too-tall misfit with red, flaky skin all over my face.  Only a few months into sixth grade we were so attached at the hip that we were mistaken for siblings - both fair haired, green eyed, pale.  Having a flair for the theatric, he would bring cake and balloons to school for my birthday. On those mornings, when he saw me he’d yell and run up to hug me. He’d tell people that we were twins and we’d act like those two creepy twins in the Shining, holding hands, blank stares, tilted heads. We went to the mall, the movies, all the typical hang outs for kids in the late 2000s. We were such frequent fixtures at each other’s homes that he and my parents used to joke that they loved him more than they loved me.  I had never had a friend that was so ecstatic to be friends with me. Who I was so close to, who I saw so frequently, who my p...