Reckon Review

Tag: Wind & Root

  • Adversity: Sacrificing Your Scribbles and the Six Sacred Sentences

    By Barlow Adams Everyone has heard about killing their darlings, but few writers talk about sacrificing their scribbles—at least not directly. We address it in a roundabout way when it comes to drafting, but even then we tend to put a positive spin on it. We are improving. We are refining. Transferring written lead into…

  • Healthy Habits: Intentional Steps Required

    By Valerie Peralta When I started chronicling my journey toward healthier habits in Reckon Review, the stakes were high. I had eaten myself to high cholesterol and the largest pants size I had ever needed. Never one to embrace the phrase “it is what it is,” I did not want to take a spate of…

  • Country Craft: Hello, darling.

    By Stuart Phillips Our home in the country came complete with grapevines, gnarled roots thick enough you needed two hands to encircle them. These vines had seen things. However, fifteen years of neglect had left them exhausted and sprawling across a rickety system of rusted metal poles. They were, to put it mildly, unkempt. I…

  • The Pie Was a Final Draft: Tourist Eyes

    By Michaella Thornton Florida is a myth and an amusement park for its tall tales and figurative language[1]. Astronauts who launched from this place recount the moon smelling like fireworks. A cheesy mini-golf course where the history of swashbuckling pirate queens Anne Bonny and Mary Read is on display at Hole 15. The gatekeeper at…

  • Buried Nitrogen: The Venus Vignettes

    By Sandra Barnidge There’s a new ice cream place in town that’s located conveniently (dangerously) close to both my daughter’s favorite playground and a plant nursery. Every few days, we make a loop that starts at “the bumpy slide,” then passes through the nursery, and then—if you’re good, if you don’t fuss while Mommy looks…

  • Flexing My Creative Muscles: Video Game Edition

    By Melissa Llanes Brownlee I am not a gamer. Not really. But I do play video games during my free time. And when I say video games, I mean those Triple A, holy crap, they are shooting at me, and I have to also manage my resources, and why am I doing this to myself,…

  • The Artful Academic: Writing Unspeakable Moments

    By Brandy Renee McCann Dissociation is a common experience among those of us who’ve experienced trauma. We’ve all experienced mild out-of-body experiences where we lose touch with the present moment—for example, zoning out during a conversation or binging on a TV series to get respite from a stressful period. Even intensely positive experiences can lead…

  • Soundscapes: Music Practice

    By Erin Calabria I can’t talk about music without talking about silence. During high school, when I began composing on the piano, I didn’t tell my teacher. This music wasn’t like anything I’d ever been assigned, the fingerings were meant to fit rather than strain my small hands, and everything was by ear. This music…

  • A Parental Reckoning: Parenting and Writing in Liminal Spaces (and they are all liminal spaces)

    By Amy Barnes Liminal:occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process. My daughter and I buy ICEES and beef jerky in a Buc-ees at 2:00 AM. There’s electric energy in the nearly-empty store. It’s only a roadside stop on the…

  • I Wrestle, I Rant But Writing Has Agency And Completes What I Can’t

    By Camille U. Adams Writing isn’t salvation. It doesn’t console. Writing isn’t alleviation. It doesn’t cajole trauma into being meaning. It isn’t healing. Writing isn’t freeing. Putting words on the page doesn’t seal the escaped-from yesterday. Not from pain that lingers, flares, and that chronically plagues. Penning words doesn’t rescue from trauma’s effects. Macbook on…