So I wrote this thing for anyone who is divorced, is a single parent, has field-worked, and/or has a love-hate relationship with the social scientific research report. Ok. I wrote it for myself. It kind of broke me open.

It’s about writing, by the way, and also pain, and also research methods.

Thank you to Writing on the Edge for not only publishing this wild hybrid thing, but also for awarding it the Donald J. Murray prize. http://woejournal.ucdavis.edu/.

When I was doing research in 2008 for American by Paper, my book about the writing of documented and undocumented immigrants, DACA didn't exist. People despaired--for themselves and their families. They put their hopes and prayers in what a new administration would bring. Perhaps Obama would change things. Obama! With immigrant roots (via his father) himself!

 By the time my book was published, 8 years later, there was Obama, and there was DACA.

I thought for my first blog post here, I’d share some thoughts on why writing is hard. We all have the image of someone who goes into his attic (it’s usually a him, we imagine), lights a candle, and types out reams of perfect prose. The myth about Jack Kerouac is that On the Road came out in three weeks on one 120-long piece of paper.  

Lies. Or at least partly lies.