All posts by Jackie Pick

Unknown's avatar

About Jackie Pick

Jackie Pick is a former teacher and current writer living in the Chicago area. She is a contributing author to multiple anthologies, including Multiples Illuminated, So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real about Motherhood, Here in the Middle, as well as the and the literary magazines The Sun and Selfish. She received Honorable Mention from the Mark Twain House and Museum for her entry in the Royal Nonesuch Humor Writing Competition. Jackie is a contributing writer at Humor Outcasts, and her essays have been featured on various online sites including McSweeney's, Belladonna Comedy, Mamalode, The HerStories Project, and Scary Mommy. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, Jackie is co-creator and co-writer of the award-winning short film Fixed Up, and a proud member of the 2017 Chicago cast of Listen To Your Mother.

Hold

Inspiration, Writing, Writing process, Writing the first book

I hold my breath when I write. I hold my breath through a sentence or a paragraph. I exhale when it’s safely on paper.

I wrote this week. I had thoughts on my writing this week.

A lot of what my book seems to want to be about is finding your voice in dark times.

The events of this past week — shootings and letter bombs and unimaginable sorrows and increasingly dark times for the most vulnerable among us — provide too much real fodder for the work.

There are many feelings now — anger, dismay, fear. These feelings are a constant for some of us, stoked by the occasional (or not-so-occasional) event that for most people are just sad news stories.

I’m just sitting with that today until I exhale.

 

Yahrzeit-candle-300x262

 

In Search Of…

Fiction, For the love of a dog, Humor, Publications, Things that smell, Writing, Writing process, Writing the first book, , , ,

This week I am hoping that the infinite monkey theorem works in my favor, for I wrote like a nimble-fingered simian with a penchant for salted caramel mocha coffee.  Continue reading In Search Of… →

Scratching the Nerd Itch, or The One Where I Talk About Cheese Harvesting

Writing, Writing process, Writing the first book, , , , , ,

I prepped a lot before diving into writing the first draft of a novel,  have just enough self-awareness to know what advice will work for me.

One piece of advice that I read that that is now sacrosanct is Continue reading Scratching the Nerd Itch, or The One Where I Talk About Cheese Harvesting →