Sometimes something happens and I’m inspired to write.  I don’t initially react, but the event stays with me, and I react later, the best way I know how, by writing about it.  That’s what happened recently when my son and I were out and we heard a mother tell her young daughter to “shut up.”  (You can read that essay “7 Reasons Why It’s Not Okay to Tell Your Child to ‘Shut Up’” here.

Other times, I write in response to a particular call for submissions.  That’s the case with two recently published anthologies.  One of my personal essays was recently published in Tomato Slices — An Anthology of Tomato Stories, Poetry, Art, and Recipes.

And another of my personal essays was published in So Glad They Told Me: Real Women Get Real About Motherhood.

After all, that’s what happens with writers.  Nora Ephron has credited her mother as saying “‘Everything is copy; everything is material.”  I agree.