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.

Something NaNoWriMo This Way Comes

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Shhh…don’t tell anyone that my kids are healthy and I’m sitting down to write between loads of laundry and finding errant tissues in between couch cushions.

I’ve been working hard on writing and submitting pieces to publications that want previously unpublished pieces that has meant abandoning my blog for a while.

To be fair the children have had the plague which is what tends to happen as soon as I get into a writing routine. NaNoWriMo is around the corner and it’s approximately 1666 words a day. I should like to put words here on my blog, my writing womb, and write things just for the practice and just for the fun. I don’t consider myself a novelist…but I don’t rule it out for someday.

This week I am finishing up two pieces to be submitted for consideration for a book on multiples. My writing feels untamed and energized these days. A little reckless, even. It’s wonderful and terrifying as I try new genres, new approaches, new structures. New thinking. I feel like someone who has returned to exercising after many years off…I’m definitely starting to feel the strength returning.

A friend shared with me a wonderful article about the wonderful danger of living and working with passion.  It’s been on my mind a lot lately. It feels, this past year, that every word I write renders me vulnerable and always in danger of tilting over. That’s how I know I’m on the right path.