Rachel Scherrer

The mean number is an average. The mean girl is an icon, the mode by which people socialized or attempting female may express power. Cutting. Exclusionary. And then there is meaning, to mean, I mean, what do you mean? So…middling, bullying or reaching for what matters? All of it: mean. This is the water we […]

The edge, the in between. The beginning, a transition, a threshold. Liminal is not linear. There are worlds to cross, worlds to merge. You live in between all the demands on you, all the certainties and somedays, the what ifs that haunt our days with their absences. Your writing thrives in a liminal space, too,

Kilter means “in good working order, aligned,” but I’ll bet you’ve never heard it without “off” or “out of” in front of it. We know when we’re off-kilter, when the world is out of kilter, but do we notice when the world is on-kilter, in kilter? Know your own kilter. Know what it feels like,

Release judgement. J is not for judgement, which hinders creativity, a stick in the spokes of your wheel. And release meaning. J is not for jurisprudence or just so. Sure you want to write something brilliant that moves hearts and changes the world. But. This is also an art made of ink, sound, rhythm, imagery

There is only one reason to write. It’s not money or fame. I won’t say what it is: it’s your reason, singular and strong. Your job is to invigorate your writing practice with that underlying reason. And with support and reward. What nourishes the urge to write? I have a student whose weekly writing practice–which we touch

One day many years ago now, Angie said to me, “It doesn’t seem like you enjoy writing any more.” Perhaps she only wanted to stop my complaining and despair. Perhaps it was an observation she couldn’t hold back. She’s without guile; it was true, though it rose up in me to protest. Instead, silent, I

Nothing in this project is about Know with its secret K or Proselytize with its gristle and fake grin. This is guess work and wrestling, fierce wonder where the answers matter and you haven’t got them. That’s why it’s hard. Not the dishes and the salaried job and the demands of loved ones. Those squeeze time, sure, but this

Fail big. Fail soon. Fail right away and then often. This one is about risk, taking it, seizing it, insisting upon it–risking it. Failure is a creative necessity. We are all born strangers to this world we cannot understand. Crab our way into some sense of it, eyes round with wonder, then slick with scorn, then heavy

Give yourself whatever stretch of time is most elastic, the hours that open, the minutes that, spongey, give way to something below them, beyond them. That time where, pressed, the bookshelf swings open to become a door. It’s a different time for everyone. Don’t follow your ideal fantasy–what you wish you were–to some other rhythm

Dancing is hard, too, like writing. I mean the kind of dance you do at a club, a party, lights low or roving or flashing or spotted, music a pulse behind and current of words, a bottle rolling, a triangle of pool balls suddenly split. And you there, moving your body, an improvisation of flailing