01. SPEECH, the Film

In the months since the 2016 presidential election, I’ve been struggling to find a purpose for my writing, a reason to keep creating and imagining my own worlds, in a world that feels more alien and terrifying each day.

Today, though, I found inspiration in a short film “Speech” directed by writer/director Tatia Pilieva. Read more →

02. Why I Marched

On January 21, 2017, I marched in Los Angeles as part of the Women’s March on Washington protesting Donald Trump’s presidency. In sister marches around the world, between 3 and 5 million people protested that day. Read more →

03. A Call for Action, and Hope

On election night, I wasn’t the only one in my household watching the results with dismay. My eleven-year-old son kept coming into the room, sitting with me, looking for reassurance. “It’s going to get better, Mom, isn’t it?” he kept asking. Read more →

04. A Feminist’s Reaction to Trump’s Election

I am a feminist who wears that title with pride. Yet, for most of my life, I’ve been forced to accept sexism as the price of being female.
Read more →

05. Game Face

Early on, I learned that game faces were not my forte.  Read more →

06. Potty Mouth

I was in third grade when I uttered my first curse word.

I told myself I did it by accident, but really it was in the name of love. Read more →

07. A Rose by Any Other Name is a Different Friggin Rose

Recently, Anna Murray, a good friend and kick-ass writer, wrote a series of posts about women changing their names when they marry. As part of the project, she asked friends to share their reasons for their choices. Anna’s posts are provocative and well-researched. I particularly love the one where she debunks the myth that women have always taken their husbands’ names. I highly recommend reading the whole series in one sitting.

The project got me thinking about my own choice to keep my surname.

I never considered changing my last name, especially since I married later in life, in my mid-thirties. By then, I was known in all my social and professional circles as “Colette Sartor.” Any name recognition value I’d built through the years would have gone out the window if I changed my name. And, from what I’ve heard, legally changing names is an administrative nightmare.

But really, the choice to keep my surname was more personal than that. Read more →

08. My Unexpected Superpower

The Age of Invisibility is upon me.

I’ve been dreading it.

I thought I had time. I thought it would be years before men started walking past me and letting doors slam in my face instead of holding them open for me. Before teenagers nearly mowed me down with their skateboards because they didn’t notice me directly in their paths.

But I live in Los Angeles. And I don’t do Botox or fillers.

Apparently, that’s enough in La La Land to launch an older woman into invisibility.

Read more →

09. Stolen Time: Writing While Financially Challenged

I write early in the morning. I write late at night. I write in between critiquing papers and preparing lesson plans and helping my son with his homework and feeding the dog and making dinner and critiquing more papers and teaching workshops and attending writers groups and getting the car fixed and the driving my son to school and the dog to the vet and spending quiet time with my husband and kid and visiting relatives and going out to dinner with friends.

I write whenever I can. I write because I want to write. I write because I have to write. I write. I write. I write.

That’s what all writers do, isn’t it?

Yes, but with varying degrees of difficulty, depending on their financial situation. Read more →

10. Speak Up!

I spent my high school years at a tiny, all-girls Catholic school.

Before I go on, I need you to banish the image of a stereotypic Catholic school girl–sweet-faced, wearing knee-high socks and a pleated tartan miniskirt that barely covers her ass, her glasses lowered as she pouts with puffy, bee-stung lips.

Excise her from your mental database.

That was not our school. At our school, we were expected to exceed stereotypes, to assert ourselves, to be intellectually curious, volubly so.

To speak while female. Read more →