drmstream[writing]

Part IV: I Know I’m Los­ing You — Once?  You fucked her one time!  Just once?  You fucked her just once?  A lit­tle whore and you stuck your cock inside her and just once is sup­posed to mean some­thing?  Like that makes you a good guy?  Maybe that’s why you’re telling me its just once, because […]

  The over­crowded mind can lead to an unset­tled soul. Over the years I’ve learned to trust my tech­niques for qui­et­ing my mind. I let my con­scious­ness float, drift into an unde­fined space that sus­pends the for­ward momen­tum of thought, qui­ets down the chat­ter and waits for a struc­ture to form. Even as I wait the […]

Fifty years ago, my mom was at the begin­ning, my dad was at the begin­ning, I was about to start. We were all in Worces­ter, in the lit­tle apart­ment. Nine months was com­ing to an end: the mar­riage was 11 months old. What voices ran through their minds? It was a start­ing out. They were […]

I am not a writer. I am not good enough to be a writer. I don’t have what it takes to be a writer. I want to be a writer. I am not an artist. I want to feel like an artist. I can remem­ber what it felt like to try to write, before I […]

When I hear the words “writer’s block,” I think of some­thing that is big and for­mi­da­ble. The image is wrench­ing: an imag­i­na­tion has been blocked by an organic, but chimeri­cal force. A per­son wants to do some­thing badly, but each time they start off to do it, they are thwarted. It’s like Sisy­phus strain­ing to […]

When Preacher stepped out of the ele­va­tor, he saw a man in a beige suit and pink west­ern shirt sit­ting in a swivel chair behind a huge desk, framed against a glass wall that looked out onto the bay. On the desk was a big clear plas­tic jar of green-and-blue candy sticks, each striped stick […]

From The Given Day by Den­nis Lehane: They had a few more drinks and Ruth had to say he’d never seen a cou­ple so in love. They barely touched, and it wasn’t like they got all gooey on each other, talked to each other in baby voices and called each other “dumpling” or any­thing. Even […]

I woke up in bed, it was the mid­dle of the night.We were still involved in a great big fight­She said, I’ll give you five min­utes to get out of hereI said, I’ll give you five min­utes to change your mind.She said, Don’t hold your breath, it won’t hap­pen this time.Did you see the way […]