Mindi Welton-Mitchell/Melinda Mitchell

My heart grieves. We have learned nothing about our imperialist wars. Get ready for them to prop up the Shah’s son like we are in the Middle Ages. If you don’t think that Islamophobia is playing a big role in this Christian nationalist government’s foreign policy, you are asleep at the wheel.

A gold medal with 14K etched inside Text reads A Medal For You February Writing Challenge 14K! I write 14,000 words this month!

I had set out to write 28,000 words but life happens. I am very glad to have written 14,000 new words in February and the work in progress continues on! I'll do this again next year. #FebWrite2026 #writingchallenge #writinggoals #writing

I wonder if a hard-line successor will assume power and further destabilize the region just like every other time this has happened

Some days you tell everyone you're okay because you believe you're okay and then you knock the shower curtain rod down and you bawl for fifteen minutes even though it's just a shower curtain rod but its because everything feels like it's being knocked down.

Then you pick yourself up and go.

Screenshot of my Facebook post: One of her favorite hymns that she and I (Mindi) used to sing as a duet in church was What Wondrous Love is This? The last verse speaks to us now: And when from death I'm free, I'll sing on, I'll sing on, And when from death I'm free, I'll sing on. And when from death I'm free, I'll sing and joyful be, And through eternity, I'll sing on, I'll sing on, And through eternity, I'll sing on. We love you, Mom.

My brother, my mom, and me last summer. My mom is in the middle with a purple streak in her hair.

My mom Sarah died last night, after a long struggle with cancer.

Fuck cancer.

Today marks 14 years since Trayvon Martin was shot and killed while walking home.

He had dreams to attend college in Florida and become a pilot, but he was murdered at age 17.

BREAKING: Protests have erupted at Columbia University after the school says DHS agents detained a student after making "misrepresentations to gain entry" to building.

Things you can't control:

If someone will like your story
If an editor will buy your story
If people, even friends/family, will read your story

Things you can control:

If your story shines; if it's the best it can be
If editors have a chance to read it

Keep. Writing.

live free or die

Last month when I went to visit my mom, I ended up in the ER the second day of my four day visit due to a bad migraine.

I was there for 90 minutes for IV fluids.

Just got the bill for the physician for $782.

I have insurance. This is what the doctor cost after insurance.

How do you let your loved ones go, whether it's a breakup or loss of a relationship or loss of a loved one?

Writing helps. And music. And prayer. And therapy.

As I travel this journey of hospice with my mom, it's recognizing that I will never have the relationship with her I wanted, and that I have to let that go, along with letting her go.

I've been writing this story for 30 years, but I think the heart of it hasn't been as clear until now.

Back then I was focused more on the pain of breaking up (I was 20, in what I now know was a very one-sided relationship & letting go of that).

The story, though, always contained the complications of a mother-daughter relationship, how the mother was not who the daughter wanted her to be.

I listened to Surfacing on repeat, and the song that still strikes the heart of this story, even though the story had changed a lot, is "Do What You Have To Do."

The story is about relationships & how much we are willing to change of ourselves to fit for others, and when the breaking point comes.

My current WIP is the same story I wrote a first draft of back in 1997. I have that draft on a floppy disk (and the first 50 pages in a notebook printed on dot matrix paper).

I also have the playlist I made for the story, back when we were burning CD's. A lot of Sarah McLachlan.

I'm finding that in asking questions of the scene I've completed the day after I draft, I can make early revisions and not have to do as much structure work later on.

At least, that's what I'm hoping. #amwriting

#FebWrite2026 Crossed the 10k mark for the month. On track to hit 14k for the month. My original goal was 28K, but I don't write as fast as I used to (nor do I have as much time to write). Part of this is that I'm writing tighter drafts and rereading the scene the day after it's finished.

Political power does that.

No but I know Union Station and I'll be traveling through in two weeks on my way to Omaha. :)

Are you in Chicago?

In all seriousness, I see the UK arresting a MEMBER OF THE ROYAL FAMILY for Epstein ties and here we sit, our thumbs up our butts, in the country where our 6th grade social studies teachers smugly assured us this kind of lawlessness and nepotism could never happen

the overseer of project 2025 is telling you out loud that every inch you cede on trans rights is part of the plan to create a white christian fascist state

I'm at that stage of writing where I both simultaneously think this might be the best thing I've ever written and it's crap.

And Becky Chambers' Monk and Robot duology, ironically about a monk and monastic life and connection to nature, also seems to resonate with this Benedictine ideal.

"Benedict wants us to reflect on ideas, not simply to collect them or repeat them or accept them unknowingly."

While he may have meant sacred readings, I think this practice can apply to anything that we read that stirs in us. I've certainly felt this reading Tolkien or Herbert or Butler or LeGuin.

"In Benedict's time,in a culture more illiterate than not,in communities of peasants & craftsmen,shepherds & men-at-arms,he required the work of the mind. He placed constant & unconcealed emphasis on the harrowing of the soul w/the ideas & sacred stories & the words of the holy ones who went before.

Benedictine spirituality has been tugging at me in the last year, especially as I've spent time at Holy Wisdom Monastery. I'm reading more about it for Lent and this quote from Joan Chittister confirms it for me:

"Reading, it seems, can be one of the most spiritual works of the soul."

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Threatening email from a Herry Sharp to leave negative reviews on my book that is currently out of print.

Hey writer friends. Anyone else get a threatening email like this? Hilarious part is this is about a book of mine that's out of print. Bots are sure funny.

A woman in a white hat and white blanket sits on a porch looking out at the snow.

My mom is a fighter. Her caretaker took her out on the porch to enjoy the view of the snow for a little bit. ❤️