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northwest-review

November 11, 2022 /

Cover of Northwest Review literary journal illustration of a woman wearing a “the future is female” t-shirt for abortion story.

By Rachel Sarnoff 0 Comments

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Welcome! I created this blog in 2008 as a resource for healthier living with less judgment. I'm a mother of three, former journalist, and co-founder of the (shuttered, sniff) sustainable beauty and fashion site EcoStiletto. I was Executive Director of the nonprofits The 5 Gyres Institute and Healthy Child Healthy World and appeared as a sustainable lifestyle expert on "The "TODAY Show" and "CNN Headline News," among others. Oh, and have you checked out my TEDx talks: Trash is Ruining Recycling and Can One Straw Change The World? Today, you can find me here. Let's keep in touch! xoRachel

rachellincolnsarnoff

Sometimes you have to just go climb a rock. #joshu

Sometimes you have to just go climb a rock. #joshuatree #joshuatreenationalpark #amrelaxing #amnotwriting

What’s on your cookbook shelf? I usually go off

What’s on your cookbook shelf? I usually go off script when it comes to meals (sometimes it works, sometimes not so much) but I do love reading these beautiful books. My stack started with The Joy of Cooking, which my aunt gifted me when I graduated from high school and is now held together with tape, next to the copy that I gave my daughter when she left for college (and may have inspired some of her @jujusdujour recipes). The newest addition is a truly gorgeous and inspirational cook/help/poetry/amazingness book by @julesbdavis #TheKitchenHealer out now from @soundstrue. It’s about cooking and healing and community and women and accessing our power both individually and communally. Plus a little bit of memoir from this amazing author and inspirational human. #AmReading #julesblainedavis #thekitchenhealer #cookbooks #books #bookstagram

These #vintage records include classic tracks like

These #vintage records include classic tracks like “Lonely Little G-String” and inspire serious #MadMen vibes. Sadly missing the instructional booklet. You can’t make this stuff up! #amwriting #amlistening #60sstyle #60smusic

Late last year, I read an essay by @elizabeth_gilb

Late last year, I read an essay by @elizabeth_gilbert_writer in which she described her process when she first began submitting stories for publication. It was like tennis: Every time a story was lobbed back to her she sent it back over the net to another potential publisher. One in, one out. I took that to heart and each time I received a no, I swung harder. I still haven’t placed a story, but last year I published three nonfiction pieces. More than 50 agents passed on my novel, but 11 requested the full manuscript and responded with detailed notes. (After enough time in the slush pile, querying writers like me gauge success by the detail of the rejection.) No, this work is not lucrative and yes, it is a privilege to carve out the time and attention that it demands. Last spring, I was inspired by @jamiattenberg’s #1000wordsofsummer to schedule hour-long writing sessions, often at 5 a.m. before work, in order to chip away at a new novel that just topped the 50,000-word mark huzzah! Cheers to all the creative people who can’t stop won’t stop trying to make sense of this reality through art. I am inspired by all of you.
#AmWriting #Memoir #Essay #Nonfiction #Fiction #WomensFiction #WritersOfInstagram #Writer #Writing #WritingCommunity #PacificUniversity #MFA

So excited for this double feature! @deshawncharle

So excited for this double feature! @deshawncharleswinslow co-led our fiction workshop @pacificmfa in January and his insight was AMAZING. Can’t wait to read these books! #amwriting #amreading #deshawncharleswinslow #decentpeople #inwestmills #pacificmfa #writersofinstagram

Every year, it’s like a living painting outside

Every year, it’s like a living painting outside my window. Lula likes it too. #losangeles #pearblossom #socal #spring #dogsofinstagram

Who else is reeling from reading this incredibly p

Who else is reeling from reading this incredibly powerful and terrifying book? Let’s discuss. #amreading #barbarakingsolver #demoncopperhead

My local dog park has been transformed into a pet

My local dog park has been transformed into a pet cemetery. Spoiler alert: the duck dies. #onlyinla

Last week, my husband asked me what experiences we

Last week, my husband asked me what experiences were on my bucket list. Today he surprised me by checking one off. #falconry #hawking #bucketlist #bucketlistadventures #valentinesday

Things I learned recently. 1. Ritual works. A r

Things I learned recently.
1. Ritual works. A room, a desk, a coffee shop. Paper and pen or antique typewriter. Someone changes his shoes like Mr. Rogers before he sits down at his desk, another does visualizations. For months, I switched into writing brain by exiting my office, where my work desktop lives, and sitting with my laptop (wifi off) in a chair next to the window in my bedroom. I now recognize this as a ritual.
2. Quality, not quantity. Maya Angelou rented a hotel room and wrote in it for six hours a day. (She asked the staff to take all the art off the walls, so she wouldn’t be distracted. And she drank sherry.) But many of us are working writers - by this I mean working at something else while maintaining a writing practice. We squeeze it in where we can. Currently, I get up at five so I can write for an hour before starting work at seven, a luxury made possible by remote work. I rarely have a concentrated stretch of time, and yet I keep chipping away at my novel, one paragraph or page (on a good day) at a time.
3. It’s a practice. Until recently, I didn’t believe that writing every day was that important. I would sit down and write for eight hours and then not for weeks at a time. (I was also a working co-parent of three children. So there’s that.) Now I’m trying to write every day, even just for 30 minutes. And what that means is when I’m doing something else — working or driving carpool or yoga or walking the dog or cooking or watching television — a part of my brain is still with those characters and re-entering the scenes is easier.
4. Writing is a tap you can’t shut off. Waking up in the middle of the night to scribble in the dark. Dictating a note to Siri in the car. Pinching your arm in a dark movie theater so you’ll remember a word when the lights turn on. Today I realized that one of my main characters has freckles and another needs to find a credit card and a third is smelling vanilla. All of these realizations happened while I was doing other things (see above). That’s writing, too.
Right?
#AmWriting

Exiting the @pacificmfa womb and headed into the w

Exiting the @pacificmfa womb and headed into the world, proud of brilliant graduates including @allisuuunshines and @krazykenzer14 and honored to be on this path with @kburmz_ and @katiesumers and @rwrowe21 and too many others to name “jumping and dancing and skipping” and writing and reading and listening and thinking. I am profoundly grateful for this community and fellowship that is truly life-changing, and I read this poem TODAY which is further proof the universe is listening.
THE DAYS (abridged)
If only I could live my life, not write it,
I’d have double the experience
and be better at nothingness, at being present.
The page, I once believed, offers permanence,
sanctifying time, making it longer,
but now I see my words as susceptible,
even if digital, to fire, flood, misplacement.
To misinterpretation. To accidental
download by enemy. I don’t yet want them
to be lost, but I dread the possibility
that they won’t self-destruct at the end
of my life, or the end of my lucidity.
Maybe I’ve been using paper all wrong,
committing to ink what should live in my head,
which is part of my body, which will not last…
Each night, I had written Here is what happened
like a kid whose pen makes her small life exciting,
then gone on mistaking the plot for the story,
as if the point of writing were writing.
-Adrienne Su “The Days” published in the New Yorker January 2/9 2023 (abridged)
#AmWriting #Memoir #Essay #Nonfiction #Fiction #WomensFiction #Stories #Story #WritersOfInstagram #Writer #Writing #WritingCommunity #PacificUniversity #PacificMFA #MFA

Searching for the sleeper wave. #amwriting #amread

Searching for the sleeper wave. #amwriting #amreading #fiction #writer #writersofinstagram #writingcommunity #mfa

After the recent announcement of the fusion breakt

After the recent announcement of the fusion breakthrough at Livermore — where my grandfather once worked as a chemist, that’s him on the right — many messaged me that the “climate crisis was over.” At the lab, lasers fused two forms of hydrogen into helium, which released more energy than it took to make it. And yes, this is amazing: Nuclear fusion releases no greenhouse gases and the waste is less problematic than what’s produced by nuclear fission, which is what my grandfather worked on. But the Livermore experiment — among many others — was able to produce just a small amount of energy and scaling its ability will take a lot of time, which we don’t have. Here’s what we do have: Wind and solar and regenerative agriculture, which are all eminently scalable now. As my grandfather might have said, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Photo: Bonestamp
#Climate #ClimateJustice #KeepItInTheGround #CleanEnergy #Motivation #MommyGreenest

I’m not big on resolutions, but I do believe in

I’m not big on resolutions, but I do believe in ritual. Every New Year’s Day — and my birthday — I try to do the things that I want to be doing for the rest of the year. I spent the morning writing and then did some yoga and went for a walk with my family. I made posole for my son’s birthday party and ate said posole and it was delicious. I prepped a bit for work and played my guitar. All in all, an excellent start to another year. How about you? #happynewyear #newyear #resolutions #ritual

I have always been a writer. Published? Not so muc

I have always been a writer. Published? Not so much. I published myself, obviously — MommyGreenest since 2008 woot! — but with other projects I tended to give up after a pass and internalize the rejection. But late last year, I read an essay by @elizabeth_gilbert_writer in which she described her process as tennis: Every time a story was lobbed back to her she sent it back over the net to another potential publisher. One in, one out. I took that to heart and each time I received a no, I swung harder. I still haven’t placed a story, but this year I published three nonfiction pieces — in the @washingtonpost, @nwreview, and @hippocampusmag. With encouragement from Kate McKean’s @agents_and_books newsletter, I submitted to over 50 agents who passed on my novel, but 11 requested the full manuscript and responded with notes (this will mean nothing to most people, but after enough time in the slush pile, querying writers gauge success by the detail of the rejection). No, this work is not lucrative and yes, it is a privilege to carve out the time and attention that it demands. Last spring, I was inspired by @jamiattenberg’s #1000wordsofsummer to schedule hour-long writing sessions, often at 5 a.m. before work, in order to chip away at a new novel that just topped the 50,000-word mark huzzah! Next week, I’ll join @pacificmfa peers in Oregon for my first in-person residency on the slowest train ever to an MFA. Cheers to all the creative people who can’t stop won’t stop trying to make sense of this reality through art. I am inspired by all of you.
#AmWriting #Memoir #Essay #Nonfiction #Fiction #WomensFiction #WritersOfInstagram #Writer #Writing #WritingCommunity #PacificUniversity #MFA

Finally c-positive, which is a negative, but the p

Finally c-positive, which is a negative, but the plus side is a cozy blanket, knitted with love by a friend, and this amazing book, sent to me by my mother, which includes this wisdom: “…it strikes me as a particularly dangerous fantasy…that someone might be able to live without…heartbreak or sorrow. Which I’m pretty sure you only get to do if you have no relationships, love nothing, are a sociopath, and maybe, if you’re enlightened. I don’t know about you, but I check none of these boxes.” Love love LOVE. Who else is reading/has read? Let’s discuss! #amreading #rossgay #essay #nonfiction #inspiration

Los Angeles is full of magical places, especially

Los Angeles is full of magical places, especially this time of year. We got dressed up and went to one of them. Highly recommended. Happy holidays, everyone!

When your daughter is doing the crossword puzzle a

When your daughter is doing the crossword puzzle and you know both the answer and the person in the clue.
#JennaJambeck #Plastic #CircularEconomy #BreakFreeFromPlastic #Motivation #Health #Wellness #MommyGreenest

Obsessed. #Natural #NaturalBeauty #CleanBeauty #Be

Obsessed. #Natural #NaturalBeauty #CleanBeauty #Beauty #Perfume #NaturalPerfume #HenryRose #NotSponsored

Slow and steady wins the race. #SlowAndSteady #Ha

Slow and steady wins the race.
#SlowAndSteady #HappyHolidays #HappyHolidays2022 #AmWriting #WomensFiction #WritersOfInstagram #Writer #Writing #WritingCommunity

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