Author: 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

· Leave a comment ·

Jackie Pick's avatarJackie Pick

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

View original post