by Bill | Feb 15, 2025 | Uncategorized
“I think I broke my wrist,” Nina said. My wife was on her way back to our rented house from a nearby bodega on our second evening in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. “I tripped and fell on the sidewalk on the way to the store.” “On the way...
by Bill | May 19, 2024 | Uncategorized
[This piece is based on a prompt: It had to be exactly 26 sentences long, each one beginning with the next letter of the alphabet. One sentence had to be 100 words long. See if you can spot that one.] Anxiety spread worldwide in early 2020 as a deadly, pernicious,...
by Bill | Feb 2, 2024 | Uncategorized
[This is an excerpt from Making the Low Notes] “Say hello to Chita Rivera and John McMartin, everybody,” David Loud, the conductor, tells our pit orchestra, gesturing toward center stage. The winds and brass sections applaud the two stars with their feet; the string...
by Bill | Jan 19, 2024 | Uncategorized, writing craft
“William,” said my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Tobias, “you’re a very good writer. You should keep at it.” Not only was Mrs. T the gentle, understanding teacher I needed at the time, but this middle-aged, bespectacled woman was also the object of one of my...
by Bill | Jan 16, 2024 | Uncategorized
A while back I read Zadie Smith’s wonderful first novel, White Teeth and Alexander Chee’s collection of beautiful essays How To Write an Autobiographical Novel. Reading this kind of literature hits me the same way listening to Yo Yo Ma or Keith Jarrett or The...
by Bill | Jan 8, 2024 | Uncategorized
Nothing changes until it becomes what it is. Bit of a head scratcher, eh? One of the most challenging tasks of the therapeutic process is discovering the cluster of issues that energize a person’s behavioral, cognitive and emotional distress. What the client presents...
by Bill | Dec 29, 2023 | Uncategorized
Here are a few anecdotes that didn’t make it into Making the Low Notes: Jay Leno “opened” for a dance band I was working with at a posh North Shore home situated on Lake Michigan about twenty years ago. Some guy with way too much money was throwing himself a...
