Ericka Lutz's Blog
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Aug.03.2008
Larah (rhymes with Hurrah) Berlin was a fahhbulous celebrity from Europe in the mid-1980's. Nee Laura Bernstein in Cleveland, Ohio, she moved to France (pronounced Frahhhnce) at a young age where she became famous for her great beauty, magnetic sexuality, and overall je ne sais quois.
A singer, a...
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10 comments
Aug.02.2008
This year, my New Year's resolutions included finding a daily spiritual practice.
I'm not religious. I was raised a Jewish-Atheist with little-to-no emphasis on the spiritual side, and the spirituality I've come to on my own feels deeply personal. It doesn't involve churches or ritual or tradition...
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Aug.01.2008
THANK YOU. That was intense! I am awed and deeply moved beyond expression by how much you all clicked all over me.
Thank you Red Room staff, authors and members, my friends, my family, my colleagues, the Literary Mamas, the Writergrrls, the Writermamas, the Wombatistas, my Facebook friends, my...
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14 comments
Jul.31.2008
I tell my students to close their eyes. I dim the lights, I place a piece of dried fruit in front of one, and I tell them, "Now open your eyes and spend five minutes experiencing the object in front of you." When the five minutes are up, I turn the lights back up and say, "Now write...
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9 comments
Jul.31.2008
My dad, like so many of us in the family, is a college teacher. Many of his students are adults, and some regularly give him food gifts. Much of this bounty he and my mom enjoy. Sometimes there's just too much, and he passes it along to us.
Sometimes we get canning jars of peaches or berries from...
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2 comments
Jul.30.2008
The intangible gains are greater than the tangibles. But I still want to win. We're rounding the bend with about 30 hours left in the Red Room contest and it is VERY close.
I've done everything I can.
I've hit up my personal mailing list of friends and colleagues three or four times (and alienated...
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7 comments
Jul.29.2008
I have a great office. It's a yellow bedroom at the top of the house looking north to the Oakland Hills. It's got a futon in it to rest on (I'm a big believer in sleep writing) and it's all mine.
For some reason, I STILL cannot insert the pictures in this blog. But if you click on the links, you'll...
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6 comments
Jul.29.2008
I was walking in the woods yesterday though a shady summer Northern California hillside of madrone, bay laurel, and oak. On either side of the trail, between the trees, everywhere, poison oak was at the peak of crimson.
And I had the urge to pluck a leaf, a red poison oak leaf, and pop it into my...
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4 comments
Jul.28.2008
How can you know what it smells like inside a Nevada brothel? Whether the coffee is bottomless at Stockmen's casino restaurant? What the sun looks like coming up over the Ruby Mountains?
How can you know what "quality of friendly" the people of the town show strangers? Is it that...
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6 comments
Jul.27.2008
So, once the Woo Woo Witch Doctor cured my incurable chronic intestinal issues, I went wild. Cheese! Garlic! Bread!
What...? I never told you about how the Woo Woo Witch Doctor cured me of an incurable chronic intestinal issue? Oh! Well, you can find most of the story right here in this old Red...
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5 comments
Jul.26.2008
Advice please. What do you do to regenerate creatively? Or are the ideas for projects just there inside you, lined up like eggs in ovaries waiting for their chance to develop and pop?
I ask this seriously, because frankly? I'm not ovulating ideas, here. I'm vamping. Not the Theda Bara kind of...
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16 comments
Jul.26.2008
Okay, all you amazing fiction writers (yes, you). How are your chops? Can you write a complete short story in exactly 70 words? Can you include BODY PARTS? Can you include the word YELLOW? Can you get character and plot and backstory and conflict and resolution and all that fiction stuff in there?...
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10 comments
Jul.25.2008
Reading of student papers, bluebooks, etc. a form of torture ... a matter of rubbing an iron file over one's teeth, or holding urine in one's mouth, or having the racket of a bulldozer in one's ear for an hour or two on end. — Newton ArvinI'm grading a stack of seventy papers from my Business...
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3 comments
Jul.24.2008
Vicki Forman's son died early this morning.
I've never met Vicki in person, I never met her son Evan. I've never met her brilliant daughter or her handsome husband -- she's an Internet friend and colleague.
It doesn't matter that we've never "met." She's extraordinary. As an advocate...
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Jul.24.2008
Our router is dead. No late-night email or blogs or Wikipedia or Facebook or Myspace or Scrabulous or Twitter or YouTube for this usually very-plugged-in household. NO RED ROOM. Yesterday I went to our local Internet café three times; the connection is free but all that herbal tea isn't. Oh, Mr....
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About Ericka
Ericka Lutz writes fiction (short and long), non-fiction (creative and commercial), and performance pieces. She's the author of the novel, The Edge of Maybe (March 2012), many short stories, columns, personal essays, and advice books. With a B.A. in...
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