Michelle Richmond's Blog

I WILL RETURN again and again to that moment. I will keep a notebook in which I record the details. There will be poorly done sketches, graphs of time and motion, page after page on which I attempt to recover the past. I will pretend that memory is reliable, that it does not erode as quickly …

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The post Notes on Memory and San Francisco’s Outer Lands first appeared on Michelle Richmond.

The post Notes on Memory and San Francisco’s Outer Lands appeared first on Michelle Rich...

a serial novella By the time you read this I will be unreachable. I will be on the other side. No—not that side. We are not talking about death. We are talking about something else altogether. Somewhere else. Hard to to describe, even harder to define, but I will try to do so in another missive. I …

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The post By the Time You Read This appeared first on Michelle Richmond.

by way of Joan Didion Not long ago I told my husband, “The book I want for Mother’s Day is You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith (not that Maggie Smith).” He said, “We could make this place beautiful.” I said, “We could, but first, more coffee…” Continue reading

The post Notes on a Marriage appeared first on Michelle Richmond.

an audio story, exclusive to subscribers I recently published an audio story for subscribers to my author newsletter. It’s called “Tenderest,” and it’s about love, labor, and New York City. You can listen to the story here.

The post Tenderest appeared first on Michelle Richmond.

You’ll find a brief and mostly true story, Les Oeufs: A Mystery on Quai de Grenelle, over at The Wandering Writer. You can read (and hear) the story here.  I also recently pondered Marginalia and the Strange Magic of Allée Marcel Proust. It’s not about Proust himself, but about one of my favorite spots in Paris, a bench …

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The post November Notes appeared first on Michelle Richmond.

I spent two years living and writing in Paris. I had planned to write a certain kind of book, but wrote a different one instead. Anxiety fueled my writing, but not always in the ways I intended.

The post On Writing and Not Writing in Paris appeared first on Michelle Richmond.

I spent two years living and writing in Paris. I had planned to write a certain kind of book, but wrote a different one instead. Anxiety fueled my writing, but not always in the ways I intended.

The post Anxiety and the Writing Life: The Paris Years appeared first on Michelle Richmond.

When I go through a dry spell in my writing, I find it helps to think in fives. Instead of beginning the day with a scene from my novel-in-progress, I begin with a quick exercise: write about five of something. Five books I love, five cities I’ve lived in, five dates, five meals…anything. In her …

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The post Five Things I Love (& 5 I Can Do Without) appeared first on Michelle Richmond.

A new audio story, exclusive to subscribers In July of 2020, we escaped crowded Paris for a remote region of Greece. This story, exclusive to subscribers, is excerpted from my memoir-in-progress about my family’s expat years in Paris, which happened to collide with the pandemic. Searching for Leonard Cohen in Hydra Sign in to read …

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The post Searching for Leonard Cohen in Hydra appeared first on Michelle Richmond.

Every writer must be a reader first, and the best education you can get is by reading. The most inspiring books for writers aren’t necessarily books about writing. Remember the first novel you wanted to tell others about? The first story that stuck in your mind? The first character you wished you could know in …

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The post 7 Inspiring Books for Writers in Any Genre appeared first on Michelle Richmond.