Alyssa Pierce's Blog, page 3

The Attempt to Find Time

So, my college days are over. I graduated in May and landed a job at a local school by August. And as if that weren’t enough, I got hitched in September. Life’s pretty great right now. I’m lacking balance though. Yeah, I worked 4 jobs through college and balanced a full course load and social […]

A Review: Heather Slomski’s “The Lovers Set Down Their Spoons”

First, a general disclaimer: I received an uncorrected proof of this book through the publisher. I am not being compensated in any way for this review. All of the opinions expressed here are my own. The Lovers Set Down Their Spoons is Healther Slomski’s first published work and the winner of the 2014 Iowa […]

When Writing and Life Overlap

This past month I’ve been working pretty steadily on a book-length memoir. It was prompted by a medical memoir piece I had to write for a class I took this previous semester. The entire book revolves around my relationship with my mother and the autoimmune disease we share (I’m aware that this sounds boring, but […]

It Takes A Few Dead People

I’ve been in a writing rut lately. Other than the work I’ve been doing on this blog and at mybattlewithra.com, I’ve pretty much hit a writing dry spell. I haven’t written a creative piece in months. So even though I’ll be living off of Ramen and PB&J for the next two weeks, I took a […]

A Review of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The reviews for Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize winner The Goldfinch seem to go one of two ways. Readers are either absolutely in love or vehemently despise it. I personally have given it a four-star rating on Goodreads because I haven’t been this emotionally attached to a book in a long time. It may be worth […]

Reject

I spent the better part of last semester pulling my hair out over grad school applications. I spent countless hours with my head bent over teeny scraps of paper, paper that had once been 8 pages of my writing sample but had been subjected to the old-school cut-and-paste method. I anguished over my personal statement […]

Therapeutic Writing?

I went to work Tuesday morning and made it about as far as the office door before I broke down sobbing. I think I was about as shocked as my coworkers were. My Dad has been dead for almost six years already, so why would his birthday set me off now when it never did […]

Becoming Eliza

During last semester, I was given an assignment in my Intro to Creative Writing class that involved writing a dramatic monologue. I scratched my head. A dramatic monologue? Isn’t that a theater thing? I admit that poetry is not my strong suit. Other than the angst-ridden poetry that I wrote during my Goth days in […]

January Writing Outing

I have this pact with my friend and fellow writer Bry that we will have at least one serious writing session a month. We look forward to these sessions, because most of the time they are the only way that we can get some serious writing done. We sneak away to a local Starbucks or […]

Ten Years From Now

I took a blogging class this past semester, and part of our homework each week was to complete a writing exercise. This one in particular was a favorite of mine. We were asked to have our future selves write about our present selves. I wanted to share it because I’m sure many of you can […]