Archive - story & spark

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Hi, friends. Some time over the course of writing these letters to you, I stumbled upon the closing Pencils Up. I don’t know where it came from or when…

Marsha McSpadden

May 8

Hi, friends. Hope you are well. It’s warming up here, summer is on the way and I am two exams and a week or so of grading from being my summer self…

Marsha McSpadden

Apr 24

Hi, friends. I hope you are well, that spring is whispering all kinds of possibilities in your ear. Over the last month or so, I’ve DNF’ed two novels…

Marsha McSpadden

Apr 10

Hi, friends. I hope you are well. There are some weeks, like this one, where it doesn’t feel as though I have any profound advice to give. It’s not…

Marsha McSpadden

Mar 27

Hi, friends. Today I want to talk about the burden of originality and how this notion trips us up sometimes. As writers, we like to think that we are…

Marsha McSpadden

Mar 13

Hi, friends. There are weeks when I don’t know how to square the relative comfort of my life with all that is going on in the world at large. This has…

Marsha McSpadden

Feb 27

Hi, friends. I don’t know if it’s the cabin fever of February or a feeling born from lack of control, but writers have been an angsty bunch on the…

Marsha McSpadden

Feb 13

Hi, friends. I hope you are well as January comes to a close. On my walk this week, I saw three daffodils in bloom. A sign that spring will be here…

Marsha McSpadden

Jan 30

Hi, friends. I’ve been thinking about agency this week - the degree to which characters, and maybe writers themselves, have agency to act, how the…

Marsha McSpadden

Jan 16

Hi, friends. I hope this new year finds you well, with a pocketful of hope and optimism about what could be. I hadn’t read any Clarice Lispector before…

Marsha McSpadden

Jan 2

Hi, friends. Here we are, the end of another year upon us. They just keep coming along, don’t they? There is, I think, a want this time of year for us…

Marsha McSpadden

Dec 19, 2021

Hi, friends. We’ve made it to December (which someone recently referred to as the Friday of the year). I imagine some of you put goals to paper at the…

Marsha McSpadden

Dec 5, 2021

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