Weekly Writing
Essays on memory, place, craft, and the New England coast. Published every Wednesday.
There is a particular quality of February light on the water at Onset that has no name I know of. It arrives sideways, low and serious, settling over the docked boats with something like patience.
The notebook that serves you is the one you actually use — not the beautiful blank one you're afraid to mark. On getting out of your own way as a writer.
Winter here is not a pause. It is an argument the landscape makes with itself, quietly and at length.
A photograph captures light, not experience. The smell of salt air, the feeling of wet sand through thin shoes — these escape the lens entirely.
There is something honest about writing in winter. The distractions are fewer. The light is limited. You either sit down and do the work, or you don't.