My Blog Circle:

• My Big Walk

CREATOR of MyBigWalk, CO0AUTHOR of THE MIRACLES OR PRATO. 

I'm doing a lot of walking this year. It's make my life a little crazy, but I like feeling a little crazy. I've been called talkative, outrageous, and (once) the funniest woman in Manhattan, but I don't think that last one was true. Anyway, I live in New Jersey now...

...where I'm a happily married woman of 50, a very proud mom, a tennis player,  a walker, kayaker, and all-around active person. I’ve learned a lot about happiness from my mother-in-law, and I love walking with new people and then adding them to my BigBigWalkers Wall. I have a good number of friends whom I treasure, and there's always room for more genuine, smart, funny, strong woman in my life.

But before I became all of these things — except maybe an active, talkative little girl — I was a writer. I’ve been writing even longer than I’ve been exercising regularly, and I’ve  been published in almost every genre including fiction, poetry, journalism, creative nonfiction, and memoir.  You can read more about my books – BLUE SUBURBIA: Almost a Memoir, LYNELLE BY THE SEA, and THE MIRACLES OF PRATO, co-written with my best friend and art historian Laura Morowitz — at my author website.

I’m the recipient of a New Jersey State Council in the Arts Fellowship in Fiction Writing, and a Catherine R. Dodge Foundation Fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. BLUE SUBURBIA was an Entertainment Weekly magazine Editor’s Choice, and a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. It was named one of the  best books of 2004 by the among the 2004 best books of the year selected by the independent booksellers association.

I hope you’ll join me on my year-long walk at www.mybigwalk.wordpress.com.  Send a picture and a paragraph about your own walking habits or adventures, and I'll add you to my wall of walkers.

How did you get to where you are now?

"If one advances confidently in the direction of ones dreams, and endeavors to life the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours." -- Emerson

When I was 21, I typed that saying out on an index card, and taped it to the wall over my desk.

I didn't know any happy women when I was growing up, but I made up my mind to be happy.  I made up my mind to use my writing, and my brains (God I got tired of being told I was "too smart for my own good"!), and my energy, to build the life I imagined.

Don't be afraid.

When I was a girl, and a young woman, I wished desparately to know what my life would be like: would I write a novel, would I make it as a writer, would I find love, would I be happy?

Don't be afraid.

Many working writers are models for me: Barbara Kingsolver, Dave Eggers, and Pam Redmond Satran come to mind. The yogis who've helped me return over and again to the present moment are my models. There's my mother-in-law Rosemarie. My husband Frank. And my daughter, Melissa -- each of them has taught me, in their own way, how to be a better, stronger, kinder, and more generous person.