Writing Tips, Part 2: Finding Material to Work With

Continued from Writing Tips: Part One. 

 

7. Be Open to What’s Around You
Look around you. Behold both the natural and man-made world. Observe how people dress, move and behave. Listen to conversations and note people's vocabulary, phrasing, accents and subject matter. Consider their motivations, hopes and fears. Observe colors, feel textures, be aware of smells and sounds. Create images to capture and convey these details to others. 

Regard these things like a philosopher.
An actor.
A monk.
A teacher.
An animal.
A child. 

 



Be a collector. Collect objects, photos and props to help you in your writing. Put them in a notebook (it doesn’t have to be fancy— mine is very plain because fancy notebooks make me nervous that I have to put brilliant things in them!). Study maps and guidebooks to find tucked-away corners in cities or the countryside. Develop a nose for unusual settings and locations.


Inspiration rarely arrives with fanfare. Sometimes it’s in a half-heard conversation, a peculiar dream, a word you’ve never heard before, a new story that sends you down a research rabbit hole. Nothing is ever too trivial or unimportant to observe and build upon in your writing.


 

8. Read Like a Writer
Read widely and with curiosity. Reread passages you love and ask why they work. What’s the rhythm? The word choice? Use of metaphor? The structure? The linguistic play? Let great writing thrill and please and teach you. 


Becoming a good writer is impossible without reading, re-reading and thinking about what you read. Don't be afraid to be influenced by really good writers; they will have done the same.

Read widely, in all genres.  When something moves you, stop and ask why. 


 

You can learn an enormous amount about plotting a narrative from a potboiler thriller, 
and about imagery from a great poem. 


Newspaper headlines and advertising slogans can demonstrate clarity and conciseness. 


Narrative non-fiction can show you how to make hard facts interesting and personal.


Carry a book with you wherever you go. Actually read the poems on the subways. Read in libraries and bookshops, on the bus, in bed and in the bath. Just read!


Don't be afraid to experiment in your reading. Go to a bookshop and ignore the piles of three-for-two offers and titles that you've already heard of. Read the blurbs on the back of books and consider which ones appeal to you and why. Browse the shelves and pick something obscure that for some reason appeals to you.

 

 

When you read, do so slowly and really think about how the author achieves the effects you enjoy or find interesting.

 Copy out or photocopy passages that you really like and put them in a scrapbook to consult when you hit a problem in your own writing. If you're wondering how to make a piece of dialogue sound natural or convey a personality in a few phrases, you can take a look at how the experts have done it and learn from them.

 

 




9. Learn from Others
You don't only learn from reading and observing the world around you. You can actively research events, places and people you can't otherwise describe or write about. Listen to authors talk about their process.
 

If you're writing a scene in your novel involving a doctor, for example, talk to one. Read medical books. Interview people who've experienced the kind of illness or accident you're writing about to gain their perspective.



 

You can learn from other beginner writers, too. Listen to their work and take note of mistakes that you've also made. Consider what does and doesn't communicate well. Mentor someone! Loads of scientific research proves that mentoring someone juuuust behind you in any kind of process has enormous benefits for solidifying our own grasp on subjects, particular abstract ones (this data is particularly strong for algebra and calculus, philosophy, and the arts). Start a writing group and meet regularly to share your work in a supportive and constructive way. Discover how to shape your work, delete the parts that don't ring true, cut scenes or verses that go on for too long or provide the crucial information that's missing.



 

Also learn from published authors. Go to their readings, watch videos, and read  essays about how writers work. Listen to interviews with authors on television or radio or live at literary festivals.

Here are a few of my favorites: 

• Toni Morrison – The Art of Fiction No. 134 (The Paris Review)
• Jhumpa Lahiri – At Work
• Stephen King – The Art of Fiction No. 189 (The Paris Review)
• Margaret Atwood – A Living Legend on Creative Process  Zadie Smith – In Conversation with Brick Literary Journal
• Sahlman Rushdie in Conversation with Charlie Rose 
• Alan Moore – Philosophy on Writing

Writing is often solitary, but learning doesn’t have to be!


10. “Write what you CARE TO UNDERSTAND”
"Write what you know" has always struck me as the kind of advice that sounds wise until you actually try to follow it. Taken literally, it suggests that writers should only draw from personal experience, which can be both limiting and creatively stifling. While grounding your work in emotional truth or familiar settings can bring authenticity, the idea that writers MUST stay within the boundaries of their own lives discourages imaginative risk and experimentation—two things that are essential to great storytelling. 

What if all you know is your grocery store job, your awkward adolescence, and the insides of your own head? That’s a narrow garden to plant stories in. And besides, isn’t part of the thrill of writing the chance to utilize the vast expanse of imaginative possibility? To step outside yourself, to sneak into other lives?
 

What I counter this age-old advice with is these: “Write what you WANT to know.” Or “Write what you are willing to thoroughly explore.” Or my favorite: “Write what you CARE TO UNDERSTAND”
Powerful fiction comes from curiosity, empathy, and the ability to ask “What if?” Writing should be a process of discovery, not just reflection. It’s not about what you already know—it’s about what you’re hungry to understand and make meaning of. When we write beyond the boundaries of our own experience with curiosity and care (this includes utmost respect for people, cultures, realities and existences far beyond our own), we don’t just create richer stories; we also expand our own worldview. Isn’t that what the best writing does—change both the writer and the reader?

If writers only stuck to what they literally knew firsthand, we wouldn’t have Beloved (Toni Morrison was never an enslaved woman), or Life of Pi (Yann Martel did not, to anyone’s knowledge, survive a shipwreck with a Bengal tiger). Mary Shelley was 18 when she dreamed up Frankenstein, and she wasn’t exactly surrounded by galvanic experiments—she was surrounded by poets and stormy weather and big questions about science and ethics. That was more enough.

Here’s the thing: writing isn’t a diary entry. It’s an act of empathy and imagination. You don’t need to have been a surgeon or a spy to write about one, but you do need to be curious and thorough. You need to ask good questions and care about research so you get the answers right. That might mean reading memoirs, interviewing people, going down research rabbit holes, or just sitting very quietly and asking yourself what it might feel like to live inside someone else’s skin. If you can do that—if you can make another person’s experience feel vivid, true, and specific—you’re doing something much richer than “writing what you know.” You’re writing what you care to understand.

So if you want to break out of your own story, start small. Give a character a job you’ve never had. Set a scene in a place you’ve never been. Let someone make a choice you never would. Follow your questions instead of your memories. Writing adventurously doesn’t mean accuracy over imagination; it means combining the two. It means being courageous enough to leave the trodden paths of what’s familiar, and trusting that your curiosity will steer you somewhere fascinating… somewhere you might never have believed… and the world has never conceived of before.

Books-by-the-Month: May

Each May, the world is reborn— its hues sharp, the air narcotic with growth. 

 
I like to turn to books that speak — in their vastly different languages—to the alchemy of spring.
Because though full of warming days and the promise of jacket-free softly lit days, May is delightfully deceptive. On the surface: sunny, sprouting, slightly unhinged from the pollen. Underneath: existential dread with a side of compost.

So here is a varied collection that hums with May’s energies: growth, mystery, intellectual fertility, and the shivering joy of the irrational.

And what more can we ask of Peak Spring than that it remind us, gloriously, that we have not yet read ourselves to the end?


1. The Wild Iris by Louise Glück

 
A poetry collection for when the world is turning green again. Glück’s poems are spare, clear, and full of the voice of flowers—serious and quiet and somehow thrilling. Reading Glück’s The Wild Iris in May is like walking barefoot through cold dew: it arrests, it cleanses

The poems, spoken in turns by gardener, flower, and G-d (Herself!) create a polyphony in which voice and silence, blooming and burial, despair and redemption, are not opposites but connected, natural realities. Glück’s garden is a battleground of consciousness, where the soul grapples with its mortality and the silence of the divine. And yet, the book shimmers with hope.

The iris, that May bloom with its blade-like leaves and solemn faces, becomes a totem of persistence.

“It is terrible to survive / as consciousness / buried in the dark earth,” 

she writes in the title poem.
 

But survive it does. The plants, anthropomorphized but never sentimentalized, speak in the dry, luminous diction that is Glück’s signature—each line tight as a root. Her flowers are not metaphors—they are selves speaking from the dirt.
 

In May, when the garden is both promise and proof, The Wild Iris is the most honest prayerbook I know. Read it with the window open.

 

2. The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
Why: May can feel mischievous — a perfect time for this surreal, hilarious story about a 92-year-old woman uncovering a mystical conspiracy at her retirement home.
And that? Is all I shall say lest I spoil the mischief.

 

3. Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
A play about gardens, chaos theory, and the collision of past and present? Sounds like May to me!
As Guenevere famously touts in Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot— the “lusty month of May” is “that darling month where everyone goes wistfully astray.” The month of May is a kind of c h a o s.

Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia takes place in an English country house where past and present slide over each other like water over glass. The play toggles between 1809 and the 1990s, between a 13-year-old genius named Thomasina and a cadre of modern academics trying (and failing) to make sense of her brilliance.

The precise “gardens” of Enlightenment-style thought give way—in the play and in the outside world of the play—to romantic wilderness. In both timelines, the characters are giddy with questions, love, and ruin. 

The brilliance of Arcadia lies in its marriage of head and heart. It makes fractals romantic and carnal love scientific. It is the ideal spring read because it is both fecund and formal—its dialogue clipped and exquisite, yet drenched with emotional urgency. Like May, it is a hinge: a time when intellect and instinct flirt outrageously, each stealing the other’s lines.

Read Arcadia aloud I say! Do all the voices! Don’t skip the stage directions! Revel fully in Stoppard’s wit, or better yet, see it performed live.



4. Weather by Jenny Offill

Early summer often brings a hum of low-key anxiety about the future (think graduation, life changes,
existential dread). This fragmented, witty novel captures May’s atmosphere beautifully—the month when the world is either blooming, buzzing, or quietly breaking into a sweat.

Reading Weather in May is like sipping lemonade while doomscrolling—it hits both your sweet spot and your spleen. Offill’s prose, famously fragmentary, lands like poetic pollen: light, airborne, and likely to spark a reaction. It mirrors the May mood—attention fractured by birdsong, barbecues, and the gnawing sense that climate change might just cancel June.

Weather is the literary version of overhearing a whip-smart stranger muttering to herself in a community garden. It’s a domestic novel, sure, but with apocalyptic garnish. Our narrator, Lizzie, is a librarian who collects anxious questions like others collect wine:

“What if we all become bugs?”

“Is it OK to eat meat if the cow wanted to die?”

And yes, Librarian Lizzie will help you renew your books while the world teeters on collapse.

May is also the month when we remember we’re animals—squinting at the sun, dreaming of reinvention. Offill gets this. Her characters are always evolving, molting old selves. Weather doesn't hand you answers; it hands you a dandelion puff of paradox and invites you to blow.

 

So if you’re standing at the intersection of “should I plant tomatoes?” and “is civilization crumbling?”, Weather is your match. It’s short enough to finish on a breezy Sunday and dense enough to haunt you until the solstice. 

 

 

5. The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

 
Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem is a groundbreaking science fiction novel that blends Chinese history, political intrigue, and astrophysics in an utterly unique way. Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, the novel explores the consequences of first contact with an alien civilization. 

The story revolves around a physicist named Ye Wenjie, who, after a series of traumatic events, sends a signal to the stars—a signal that is eventually answered by an alien race on the brink of extinction.
Liu’s writing is at once intellectually stimulating and emotionally compelling, exploring themes of scientific progress, humanity’s place in the universe, and the unanticipated consequences of our actions.
This first book in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy will take you on a mind-bending journey through space and time.

Adios, ¡VOS!

the one & only ©Michael Kushner

 Gracias, VOS. And adiós por ahora.
 
This experience has meant so much to me.
It has been a chance to portray two glorious, full-bodied, mature, brilliant Latin women.
It has been to create these characters in its world premiere.
It has been an honor participating in Christina’s debut as a playwright.
 
But it has been an antidote to a rewarding tough few years in the American theatre. Thanks to Nicole A Watson and Christina Pumariega — not only was my whole self welcome, it was celebrated. And that’s a gift indeed. 

In truth, it has been years. Years since the fire has dimmed to embers. 

The thought of stepping into a rehearsal room made my ribs tighten like a too-small corset. I thought I’d lost it—the hunger, the deep ache for the theatre. 

Then came this strange, quiet miracle: Nicole's room. A space built from listening. A director who saw past the residue of my disillusionment and asked nothing more than presence, than truth. And Christina—with her words like spiritual scaffolding. Her script didn’t demand performance; it extended a hand and whispered, "you're home."

And then there was the theatre itself—Two River. A sanctuary in red brick and soft light, where ghosts and futures meet. It held us gently. No, reverently. I found myself walking into the building and exhaling without realizing I’d been holding my breath for years. In that rehearsal room, beneath the soft hum of collaboration and care, I remembered. Not just how to act. But why. I found myself again in the silence between cues, in the sparkling mischief in the eyes of a scene partner, in the courage to stand still and let something real arrive. 

After all the disillusionment, the heartbreak, the long winter of burnout, this was spring. And its name was VOS.

Thank you Puma for your beautiful play and for being a generous and glorious scene partner and creator.

Thank you Nicole for the room you created and the vision you fostered.

Thank you to our incredible SM team lead by Jynelly Rosario. 

Thank you to our designers who enhanced the beauty of this 1000 fold. 

And to Two River Theater — one of the greatest theatres I have ever worked with, who treat their artists so well. 

 

And thank you Ana and Dr. Cossí—it was an honor to serve you. 

“Okay we done” 

The Dressing Room Project: ¡VOS!

The Dressing Room Project is the brain child of Michael Kushner (my friend and fave photographer of my face), where he takes his camera, his discerning eye, his incredible person-ability to bring the best out of actors preparing to go onstage, all married with his unparalleled taste to bring you images unlike any other. Actors preparing. Actors before the world sees them. Intimate, Engaging. 

 Michael was generous enough to come out to Two River Theater to photograph Christina and I before VOS, and how lucky we were and are. Enjoy. 

©Michael Kushner

 

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

©Michael Kushner

¡VOS! – a world premiere

@tcharleserickson

Opening Night of the world premiere of ¡VOS! at Two River Theatre.

 

All hail this female TRIUMPH of a play. This glorious, funny, warm, loving, moving, beautiful story full of history and heart. It has been an honor to be a part of the BIRTH of this piece, create these characters alongside the brilliant actor/playwright Christina Pumariega and with the peerless leadership of Nicole A Watson. 

 

What a rehearsal room (of all women— including our glorious SM team, dramaturg and AD!) This also marks my first theatre contract as a Latina actor (this one is for you Noriega family—finally!), my 7th world premiere, and marks my 20th year in the professional theatre. 

 

I’m so proud to be a part of this show I could burst.

 

As Dr. Cossí says: “Okay we done!” 

 

Let’s party.

photo by @motendesigns (also our phenomenal scenic designer)

A play is nothing without the team that makes it. It takes a village. 

That village is:

Playwright: Christina Pumariega

Director: Nicole A. Watson

Scenic Designer: Lawrence E. Moten III Costume
Designer: Raquel Barreto
Lighting Designer: Carolina Ortiz Herrera Sound
Designer: Sinan Refik Zafar
Projection Designer: Kelly Colburn
Dramaturg: Sarah Rose Leonard
Dialects: Rosie Berrido
Intimacy Coordinator: Alex Might
Production Stage Manager: Jynelly Rosario
Rehearsal Assistant Stage Manager: Gracie
Carleton
Assistant Stage Manager: Abigail Medrano
Casting: Caparelliotis Casting and Joseph Gery
Assistant Director: Jessi Stier
Associate Scenic Designer: Danielle Delafuente
Assistant Lighting Designer: Hayley Garcia Parnell
Hair and Makeup Consultant: Carissa Thorlakson
Projections Consultant: Dylan Uremovich

 

@tcharleserickson

@tcharleserickson

 

@tcharleserickson

@tcharleserickson

Alternative Email Sign-Offs for an Unhinged Era: A List

With pizazz, 

 

At your cervix, 

 

Apologies for existing, 

 

Over and snout,
 

Without my ducks in a row,

 

Ew,

 

Feeling hamburger helpless,
 

On the brink of tears,
 

Stressfully,

 

Not one single regard,
 

We ride at dawn,

 

Ok then,
 

Searching for my marbles,
 

Help I've fallen and I can't get up,

 

In a tailspin,
 

Throwing it on the back burner
 

Sitting in utter confusion,
 

One fish two fish red fish blue fish,

 

Blessed be the fruit,
 

Roll the credits,
 

Neutral regards,

 

All panic no disco,

 

With fighting words,
 

Alright alright alright,

 

If you have any questions please ask someone else,
 

Lukewarm regards,
 

Live laugh love,

 

Hanging on by a thread,

 

[insert pleasantry here],
 

Hasta la pasta,

 

Violently hungover,

 

Books-by-the-Month: April

April books: the books you read with a window cracked open, letting in the smell of new grass. The kind you flip through lazily on a park bench, feeling virtuous for finally sitting outside. In April the days stretch, juuuust a little longer, and the first true rains of the season drum against the windows—not the relentless, chaotic, personality-disordered downpours of March, but the gentler, softer showers that turn the world green overnight.There’s something about this month—half spring, half something else—that calls for stories with a little moodiness. 

- A big ol’ novel that shifts between sunlight and shadow.
- A collection of poems that brims with the promise of newness; read in snippets, between peeks at the tulips.
- A story that is best read with the window cracked open, so the smell of rain and freshly turned soil can mingle with the scent of well-worn pages.
- A classic you’ve been meaning to get to, because April always feels like a fresh start (until you realize it’s just March with better PR).

And thus, it deserves books we reach for when the sky darkens at two in the afternoon, and you think, Well, if April is going to be like this, I might as well… READ.

So, in honor of the month of new beginnings, sudden downpours, and the eternal debate of jacket vs. no jacket, here are the best books to read in April—stories that bloom, that rain, that whisper of change.

*

1. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

      I know  I know  I know—I have listed this novella in my “Spring Reads” collection, but how can I neglect re-mentioning it? A novel about escaping from one April to another—specifically, to an Italian villa bursting with wisteria from the gloomy rain of "between the wars" London. 

A story of blossoms forming where one was certain of a branch’s death. 

A story of second chances. 

A perfect, dreamy read for when you’re longing for warmth but still stuck in sweater weather.

2. Spring by Ali Smith
Smith’s novel is like April itself—unexpected, shifting, unruly, full of thaw and tension. A meditation on art, politics, and the changing seasons, it’s part of her Seasonal Quartet but stands beautifully on its own. Ali Smith’s novel is both fiercely political and deeply lyrical, weaving together fractured narratives of disconnection and rebirth. Like the month of April itself, Spring resists simplicity. It is not just a celebration of renewal; it is an interrogation of it.

Smith’s writing pulses with the restless energy of the season. She juxtaposes stark realities—immigration detention centers, Brexit-era disillusionment—with moments of sudden, almost mythic beauty. A lost filmmaker, a cynical older man, and a mysterious girl moving through the world like a force of nature—all collide in a story that feels as unpredictable as April’s shifting weather. Smith writes in a way that mimics spring’s own rhythms: fragmented yet whole, sharp yet tender, unafraid of moments of stillness before sudden, torrential movement. To read Spring in April is to be reminded that the season’s promise is not gentle; it is urgent.

But what makes Spring the perfect April novel is its insistence on possibility. Smith, like the season itself, is relentless in her belief that change is coming—even if it arrives in fits and starts, even if it is difficult, even if it asks us to reckon with the past before moving forward. April is a threshold, a moment when we must decide whether to step through or turn back. Spring is a book that urges us to step through. It does not offer easy answers, but it offers something better: the certainty that something new is always just about to begin.


3. "As One Listens to Rain by Octavio Paz
A single, stunning poem that captures the feeling of April rain—not just falling, but soaking into memory and thought. A reminder that poetry belongs to spring as much as birdsong does.

Spring has always been the season of poets—and Octavio Paz, with his relentless curiosity and lyric precision, is a perfect guide for this awakening. "As One Listens to Rain" one of his lesser-known but deeply evocative works, reads like a meditation on transience, a book where each page shimmers with April’s dual nature: beauty and uncertainty, light and shadow. The title alone suggests something more than mere precipitation—it suggests an atmosphere, a presence, a self dissolving and reforming in the rain. His language does not settle; it moves, like water, through history, myth, and personal reflection. 

In "As One Listens to Rain," he writes of love as something fluid, time as something porous, identity as something always in motion. This is poetry for the in-between spaces. Paz was a poet obsessed with thresholds, with the liminal, with the moment just before something becomes something else. And what is April if not a threshold?

4. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
This one is a heavy hitter—if you’re looking for an emotionally intense reading experience, A Little Life is a stunning and, at times, painful masterpiece. Following four college friends as they navigate their adult lives in New York City, the story zeroes in on Jude, whose traumatic past emerges slowly, layer by devastating layer. 

Yanagihara’s writing is visceral, unflinching in its depiction of suffering and survival, and yet there’s a strange beauty in her exploration of friendship, loyalty, and the human need for connection. It’s a novel that stays with you long after you've finished it, one that might make you rethink what love and friendship mean. Perfect for a long, reflective read.

5. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

No one Pays Attention like Annie Dillard. April is a month of noticing, and no book teaches the art of attention better than Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Annie Dillard’s Pulitzer Prize-winning meditation on nature is, at its heart, a book about seeing—about standing still long enough for the world to reveal itself in all its teeming, chaotic, exquisite detail. And what is spring if not the perfect time to learn to see again?

Dillard’s writing crackles— she does not merely observe the natural world; she interrogates it, turns it over in her hands, studies it with the curiosity of a scientist and the wonder of a mystic. She watches frogs being swallowed alive by giant water bugs, muses on the violent abundance of a newly hatched praying mantis nest, and kneels in reverence before a floodplain crawling with new life. Her prose— almost incantatory—mirrors April itself, a season of bursting and breaking, of terrible beauty and raw becoming. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek’s world is churning, restless, alive in ways both thrilling and unsettling.

But perhaps what makes this book most suited to this time of year is its deep, abiding sense of wonder. Dillard does not shy away from the brutal mechanics of nature, but she never loses her awe. She reminds us that the world is strange, that it is extravagant, that it is—despite all its cruelties—staggeringly beautiful.

Things I'd like to [learn how to] do: a List

© Emenem

- bake bread from scratch

- speak:
    italian, at all
    spanish, fluently

- play an entire set of American Vaudeville and English Hall variety songs on the ukulele

 

- spend a night stargazing in the Sahara

- play the accordion, virtuosically

 

- see the Northern Lights in Iceland 

- spend Shabbat in Tzfat

- witness birds migrating 

 

- scuba dive
 
- drive a race car 

 

- travel the length of Japan by train

- make mosaic artworks (I’d especially like to beautify broken urban spaces like Emenem, It’s so inspiring to make the work a better and more beautiful place, one pothole at a time)

- spend an entire month in silence, in the literal or proverbial woods, living at the speed of a poet

- walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain

- getting very good at “doing nails”

- sky dive

- visit Antarctica

- wake up one day and just be "a morning person”

 

 

Books by-the-month: March

As March arrives, bringing with it the promise of early spring, Women's History Month, and the festive revelry of St. Patrick’s Day. The literary world offers us tales of renewal, strength, and history. This month, we celebrate not only the invigorating green of the season but also the empowering stories of women throughout history. 

 

Daylight is adding up, about three minutes more each day as March progresses, give or take. Spring hasn’t arrived yet, but the plane is circling the tarmac. Welcome back, light! This time of year is The Great Unclenching, for when the light returns, something unclenches in us all. 

 

March offers the perfect opportunity to dive into novels that inspire and enrich. Here’s a carefully curated list of books that will fill your days with literary joy, perfect for curling up with during those first glimpses of warmth.

*

March Theme: Women’s History Month

Women are amazing. Good Gd how we hate them. Let's uplift them instead.

1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 

Little Women remains one of the most beloved and enduring classics of all time. The story follows the March sisters—Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy—through the trials and triumphs of their adolescence and early adulthood during the Civil War. 

 

There is a certain magic in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women that no film adaptation—no matter how lovingly crafted—can fully capture. The silver screen has given us many beautiful versions, from the golden glow of the 1933 and 1949 classics to the heart-wrenching performances of the 1994 and 2019 renditions, but nothing compares to the original novel, with its gorgeous prose, recognizable characters, effortless warmth, wisdom, and its deeply personal intimacy. 

 

Alcott doesn’t just tell the story of the March sisters—she invites us into their magical attic, lets us sit by the fire as Jo scribbles away long in to the night, as Meg dreams of simple, beautiful things, as Amy yearns for greatness, and as Beth’s quiet kindness radiates through the pages. The novel pulses with life, with all the small joys and sorrows that make up a girlhood, and it is this depth—this richness is what truly makes Little Women not just a beloved book, but one of the great literary classics in the canon.

 

For at its heart, Little Women is about the messy, bittersweet journey of growing up—about the triumphs and disappointments, the laughter and heartbreak that shape us into who we become. Who hasn’t felt Jo’s frustration as she cries, “I’m angry nearly every day of my life!”? Who hasn’t longed to leave their mark on the world, or wrestled with duty and desire when torn between home and ambition? 

 

The beauty of Alcott’s novel is that it allows space for all these contradictions, for the quiet, everyday struggles of being human, and it does so with prose that glows like candlelight—soft, illuminating, and endlessly comforting. So yes, watch the films (come on: the 1994 was so crucial to my teenage sexual awakening it is hard to express just HOW important 1994 Christian Bale was so almost every one of my teenage romantic choices for better and for worse), fall in love with the March sisters all over again—but to truly know them, to hear their thoughts and feel their dreams, there is no substitute for the novel itself.

2. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s masterpiece novella is a fever dream wrapped in the suffocating folds of Victorian domesticity. The protagonist, suffering from what is diagnosed as a “nervous condition,” is confined to a room in her home by her husband, where she becomes obsessed with the room's yellow wallpaper.

 

Written in 1892, the story explores the mental and physical confinement of women in the 19th century, it is a tale that simultaneously drones with claustrophobia and crackles with the desperation of a woman unraveling beneath the weight of total oppression.

From the very first lines, we are drawn into a world where the walls themselves seem to whisper, where the sickly yellow of the wallpaper morphs into a living, breathing tormentor. This is not just a tale of one woman’s descent into madness—it is a searing indictment of a society that silences and stifles, that mistakes a mind in turmoil for mere female "hysteria." Every creeping tendril of the wallpaper, every shadow shifting in the dim light, becomes a manifestation of our narrator’s struggle; her rebellion simmering beneath layers of repression until it spills over in a dizzying, mesmerizing climax.

 

What makes The Yellow Wallpaper so hauntingly unforgettable is its intimacy—the way Gilman locks us inside the narrator’s fractured psyche, forcing us to see the world as she does, to feel her isolation as palpably as the stale air of her sickroom. The language is hypnotic, looping and circling like the patterns on the cursed wallpaper itself, mirroring the slow dissolution of self that takes place within those four walls. 

 

And when, at last, the narrator succumbs to the madness that has been tightening its grip around her soul, we are left breathless, horrified, yet strangely exhilarated. Gilman doesn’t just tell a story; she drags us into the heart of a nightmare that feels all too real: a cautionary tale that still resonates fiercely today.

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March Theme: St. Patrick’s Day

There are too many exquisite Irish novels, plays and collections of poetry to even begin to narrow them down. From classics such as Dubliners, Star of the Sea and The Country Girls, to contemporary classics like Angela’s Ashes, there is nothing quite like an Irish writer talking about LIFE. 

 

3. Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

As St. Patrick’s Day approaches, what better choice than Frank McCourt’s memoir Angela’s Ashes, a heartbreaking yet darkly humorous look at the author’s impoverished childhood in 20th-century Ireland. But Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes is not just a memoir—it’s a symphony of sorrow and resilience that transforms even the bleakest of childhoods into something fiercely beautiful. With prose that sings like an Irish ballad—both mournful and full of unexpected humor—McCourt paints a portrait of Limerick that is as rain-soaked and poverty-stricken as it is brimming with life.

Every page pulses with the raw, unfiltered voice of a boy who endures hunger, loss, and shame, yet somehow never loses his wide-eyed wonder at the world. “When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all,” he begins, and from that moment, we are swept into a story whose power lies in its stark refusal to submit to self pity or to sentimentality; in its ability to find poetry in the gutters and grace in the struggle. It is not just a memoir—it is a testament to survival, to storytelling, and to the indomitable spirit of those who dare to dream beyond their circumstances.

 

 

4. Ulysses by James Joyce

Ulysses was first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920. It has been called one of the most important works of Modernist literature. No other book captures the soul of Dublin with such ferocity and tenderness, stitching together the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, 16 June 1904, with a depth and complexity that transforms the ordinary into the epic. To read Ulysses is to walk the streets of Dublin in 1904, to feel the rain on your face, to hear the chatter of pub-goers and the distant tolling of church bells, to live inside the thoughts of characters.

 

James Joyce’s Ulysses is not just the crown jewel of Irish literature—it is its beating heart, its wildest dream, its most defiant and dazzling creation.  Joyce hammered a job on the novel so complete that he became a category unto himself. This is a novel that dares to contain multitudes—history and myth, comedy and heartbreak, the sacred and the profane—all flowing together in an intoxicating stream of consciousness that changed literature forever.

Every literary style was mist to his grill, as he might have said, and his plotting, if such it can be called - two men who take all day to meet each other - paved the way for, among others, Samuel Beckett. 

Above all he taught every writer the importance of naturalistic dialogue; with his fine tenor voice Joyce knew better than most that we read not with the eye but with the ear.

And yet, Ulysses is more than just an ode to Dublin—it is the very soul of Irish literary ambition; the book that shattered conventions and redefined what a novel could be. Joyce takes the English language, that instrument of colonial rule, and bends it to his will, infusing it with the rhythms of Irish speech, the poetry of everyday thought, the sheer audacity of a mind unchained. It is a book that demands everything from its reader, but in return, it gives back a universe— in which a single day can contain all of human existence. 

 

“Yes I said yes I will Yes,” Molly Bloom declares in the novel’s final, breathtaking lines, and in that moment, Joyce doesn’t just conclude a masterpiece—he affirms life itself, in all its messiness, all its beauty, all its infinite possibility. 

 

If one book must stand as the pinnacle of the Irish literary canon, let it be Ulysses.

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March Theme: The Ides of March

With this addition, Julius Caesar rounds out the list perfectly, infusing the month of March with both the classic weight of Shakespearean tragedy and a timely nod to the historical moment that defines it.

5.  Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

March is synonymous with the ominous "Ides of March," and what better way to dive into the drama of fate, ambition, and betrayal than with William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar? Julius Caesar—the mighty general and leader of Rome—is on the verge of absolute power, but a group of conspirators led by Brutus and Cassius believes his rule will bring tyranny. While this ticking-time-bomb of a play is set in the heart of ancient Rome, it reads (and plays!) like "DC Noir" made popular on television in the 21st Century. It explores the tension between personal loyalty and political duty through the all-too-human lenses of loyalists and conspirators.

 

William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is so much more than "just "a history play—it is a timeless political thriller; a study of power, ambition, and the chaos that ensues when the line between patriotism and personal ambition blurs. And in 2025, as the world grapples with populist movements, political conspiracies, misinformation, high emotions and a desperate common man, the ever-present question of who truly wields power reveals that this classic feels more relevant than ever. 

 

The fickleness of the Roman crowd, swayed so easily from love to uncontrollable rage, mirrors the way modern public opinion shifts with a single headline or viral video. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings,” Cassius warns, and his words ring truer than ever in an era where leaders rise and fall within 24-hour news cycles at the whims of public perception. The senators, believing they act in Rome’s best interest, justify their actions with noble rhetoric, yet their violence only breeds more instability—a cautionary tale for any modern political upheaval.

 

Even more striking is the play’s exploration of the power of speech, leveraged emotions, and misinformation, something that resonates in an age dominated by social media and manipulated narratives. Mark Antony’s funeral oration is a masterclass in persuasion, as he subtly turns the crowd against the conspirators without ever directly condemning them: “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” What follows is a perfect example of how a skilled orator can bend public sentiment to his will, a lesson we see played out daily in modern media and politics. Observe Damien Lewis deliver Marc Anthony's eulogy-as-political-excoriation, here:

 

 

 

The chaos that erupts in the wake of Caesar’s death, where reason is drowned out by outrage, echoes our contemporary political divisions as they spiral into violence, dis and misinformation, and violent power struggles. Shakespeare’s Rome is not so different from our world in 2025—ambition, manipulation, and the ever-looming question of who truly holds power remain as urgent and dangerous as ever.

 

Writing Tips, Part 1: YOU and Your Writing

Dear Writer,

You. Yes, you. The one with notebooks full of snippets, bits n' bobs of nice words, characters, plot lines rolling about in your skull. 

 

So, you’re standing at the edge of the writing world — heart full, hands unsure. You’ve got the spark. Maybe even a brilliant idea or a dozen, and perhaps even a quiet ache at the pit of your gut because you know there’s something in you waiting to be written— but you’re not quite sure how to begin.

I remember that feeling. It’s not hesitation; it’s frozen passion. And it means you care deeply— which is already a good sign that you very well might write something worth reading. 

 

What follows is not a list of tips. Just tips! Heaven preserve us from any more RULES. Just some tidbits I wish someone had whispered in my ear when I was where you are now (and even some tips very generous people literally did.) Think of these as a series of invitations: to risk, to observe, to refine, to endure. Writing is less like architecture than it is like gardening: full of dirt, revision, quiet growth, and the occasional, inexplicable blossom.

 

*

 

1. Write for Yourself
You are your first reader. Always. If you're not excited, curious, or emotionally invested in what you're writing, it’s unlikely anyone else will be. Someone will always criticize your work (or, ya know, a lot of other things like your face or your character or the way you compost or whatever because the internet can be a cesspool). So! Please yourself. Forget market trends and imagined critics. Forget that grouchy English teacher who told you you’d never amount to anything!
The number of times I followed a rabbit hole of curiosity and ended up with a new draft. The number of pies that started from simple questions that became research trips to literal Siberia. The pandemic poetry class and a love of Greek mythology that birthed a manuscript. Get curious. Geek out and get to work.
Write the book you’d stay up all night reading. That’s where your truest voice will emerge from, find its strength and very likely show you things you never even knew to be possible within you.

 

Highly recommended. Get it HERE

2. Start Ugly. Start Scared. Just Start.
Perfection is a myth that will keep you stuck.  
Remember: Perfectionism has nothing to do with excellence, high standards, or healthy achievement or growth. Perfectionism is a deeply-rooted defensive mechanism rooted in fear and fueled by shame. https://brenebrown.com/art/tgoi-perfectionism/
Dr. Brene Brown has researched perfectionism extensively and has stated:
“Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of blame, judgement, and shame.”
All perfectionism does is keep you stuck. It also makes you miserable and often, quite insufferably judgmental of others which gets you uninvited to parties.

All to say: write your sh*tty, imperfect thing.
Don’t wait until you’re “ready” or until everything is perfectly mapped out. Don’t wait for a good hair day or for inspiration to strike. Don’t wait for anything. Perfection never arrives. Conditions will never will be ideal. 

Sh*tty First Drafts are allowed to be wild, rough, incoherent, even embarrassing. They’re meant to be. That’s why they’re not called Genius First Drafts. I know someone that calls them “Fertilizer Ideas.” I love this! Because sure fertilizer stinks, but it makes things grow! Think of first attempts as sketches, not sculptures. Think of them as the first horrendous stumble-through of the play you’re rehearsing (you know the one where someone broke a toe, props went missing, we accidentally skipped 34 pages. A disaster. But a start!) The first draft is allowed to be chaotic, overwritten, full of clichés or clunky metaphors. It’s supposed to be. Your only job at that stage is to get the words out of your head and onto the page. The CRAFT comes later — in the revision.

 

3. Create a Routine That Respects Your Energy
You don’t have to write at 5 AM. Or every day. Or by candlelight. Or in a leather-bound journal with a quill. What matters is that you show up consistently in a way that supports your life — not disrupts it.
Are you sharpest at night? Carve out 30 minutes after dinner. Care-taking? Steal 15 minutes during breaks, meal, naptime. 

 

Your writing rhythm should support your life, not fight it. Find what works for you and truly honor the ritual the way you would meet any other part of your needs, your wellbeing.

 

4. Gracefully Accept Rejection


When you start offering your work, expect rejection. Rejection is not a verdict on your worth — it’s a rite of passage. Every author you admire has been rejected (often many times over). It stings, yes. But it also toughens you, teaches you resilience, and sometimes, if you’re open to it, gives you clues on how to grow. Don't let a "no" from someone else become a "no" from you.

Rejection is a human experience that can be very stressful and unpleasant. That is why many people do anything they can to avoid it.  But just like many stressful and unpleasant things, the more you accept the sensations, allow the feelings of discomfort to move through you like a wave that WILL break and ebb should you allow it to follow nature’s course, bearing it becomes much more, well, bearable!
We feel stressed when we assume an outside circumstance is beyond our ability to cope. Unpredictability, uncontrollability, overwhelm, self-worth being challenged. Give yourself the gift of these experiences. They breed true maturity.
So.
Be business-like about submitting your work.
Keep track of who you've sent out pieces to and file feedback, especially positive comments.
When a story or poem is rejected, just send it to the next person on your list; keep going until no options remain.
After you've finished a piece, start something new. Put the old one aside for now.
Remember that plenty of novelists have two or three unpublished manuscripts under the bed.


 


5. Don't Give Up

You will doubt yourself. 

You will wonder if it’s worth it. 

You will be tempted to quit — maybe more than once.
Don’t. Keep going. 

Take breaks, revise your goals, let the draft sit if needed — but don’t let self-doubt have the last word. The world needs your stories. More importantly, you need your stories.
Don't give up because you're not some jerk’s definition of “successful.” Just keep creating. Unapologetically and with all your heart. 

Also? You never know what will happen later in life or even after you are dead. A historian in times to come may discover your diary and recognize its unique insight into twenty-first-century life. A poem you wrote many years ago may suddenly appeal to someone and be published or get chosen in a competition. A novel that was rejected 30 times might get dusted down and see the light of day many, many years after you first wrote it.

Plenty of good novels don't get published and lots of indifferent ones do. Despite what the world wants us to believe, life is not a meritocracy, and it certainly isn't fair. 

Don't get mad about it. I mean, or do. Punch a pillow or two. Eat your feelings. But then move on.

Keep going, live in hope and be open to whatever happens— and more crucially, whatever could happen that you might not even have the capacity to conceive of yet. 


 

6. You are a Writer Because You Write
Not because you’re published. Not because someone approves. Not because you have an agent or book deal. Not because your sentences are flawless.
You are a writer because you sit down, listen to your thoughts, and try to shape them into something meaningful. Or, in a more Eastern approach to creation: you trust that your work is out there, existing, and your job is to take away everything that is NOT the art. Remove the marble that David is trapped within.
That is the work. That is the art.

You don’t need anyone’s permission to begin — but if it helps, let this be it.
Start where you are. Use the voice you have. Write the thing that won’t leave you alone.
I’m cheering you on, always.