"What You're Writing" is the place for creative nonfiction from our readers. Each month, we pick a topic. Use the topic as a springboard into your own life and send us a true story inspired by that month's theme. Only nonfiction submissions that include contact information can be considered. We reserve the right to edit heavily for space and clarity, but we will give you the opportunity to review the edits. You may submit under "name withheld" to keep your essay anonymous, but you do need to let us know how to contact you. If you've already changed the names of the people involved, please let us know. Due to libel and invasion-of-privacy issues, we reserve the right to print the piece under your initials. Submissions should be typed (and if you cannot type, please print clearly). Only one submission per topic, please. Send your essay to Urbanite, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211 or to WhatYoureWriting@urbanitebaltimore.com. Please keep submissions under four hundred words; longer submissions may not be read due to time constraints. Because of the number of essays we receive, we cannot respond individually to each writer. Please do not send originals; submissions cannot be returned. The themes printed below are for the "What You're Writing" department only and are not the themes for future issues of the magazine itself.



White Lies    Sep 14, 2007    Dec 2007
First Times    Oct 12, 2007    Jan 2008
Cravings        Nov 12, 2007    Feb 2008



Accidents happen, everyone tells you. Accidents happen, just like shit; everybody knows that, and all you can do is clean it up and keep moving on. These are the facts of life, no use denying them.

Got a great boyfriend? Won't last long, that's for sure and that's for certain. He'll let you down in some spectacular fashion—or things will implode in the other direction: He'll stay great, but you'll get fired or your cat will get run over, or some other indescribable and inexplicable disaster will make up for your romantic bonanza. The scales have to balance, nothing gold can stay, and into every life a little rain must fall—especially when you just bought sunglasses.

For me, it's so much easier to trust misfortune than amazing coincidences, so much smarter to self-sabotage than to expect rainbows and ponies for all of my days. But my daughter is delighted when her favorite dress gets a hole in it, because the patch I sew on to cover it is a deep celestial blue with white and gold stars. "Now it's even more my favorite dress," she says to me. She's so happy and surprised that it all managed to converge in just that particular way. People think that's an innocence she's destined to lose, but I think seeing happy coincidences everywhere we look is an act of pure bravery.

A physics professor asked me a trick question once: "Which weighs more: a ton of feathers or a ton of cannonballs?" Of course, the point is that a ton is a ton is a ton, but today the point for me is that feathers are a lot harder to hang onto than cannonballs, and you need a lot more of them to survive, to keep you floating on hope when the cannonballs of this world want to weigh you down.

—Jackie Regales lives in Baltimore with her family, teaches English at Roland Park Country School, and likes to try her hand at every kind of writing under the sun.



I had allowed my mother to make the travel arrangements for me: Europe for six weeks before visiting my best friend at her Peace Corps stint in Nepal. Boston to JFK to Rome to India to Nepal and back again.

After leaving my family in Boston, I was on my own at the JFK International Airport Air India counter. With no expression on his face, the agent informed me, "These tickets are not valid."

I shook my head rapidly back and forth. "But here they are," I responded, thumbing through the thick packet of slightly filmy paper.

To my numb face he explained, "Your reservations were cancelled. Your travel agent must have neglected to phone in the ticket numbers."

I managed to make my way to Rome, with assurances that I could solve the rest of my ticketing problems at the local Air India office. Using my Europe on $10 a Day guidebook, I selected a pensioni that sounded clean, friendly, and close enough to walk to. A heavyset woman who spoke little English showed me a room. Three beds in a row. All I could do was lie down; there was nothing I wanted to see, nowhere I wanted to go.

I heard voices speaking rapid Italian in the hallway. The conversation quieted, and a young woman walked into my room. Our eyes met, and suddenly I recognized her from school—her name was Lisa. She had spent a year in Italy, hence her fluent Italian.

For two days Lisa took me under her wing. She found the Air India office, took me to her favorite eateries, and told me what to order and where to find the best gelato. She introduced me to the joy of carved marble statues and fountains, smiled at the whistles we received, and offered guidance on how to deal with Italian men. I remained a few days longer, with repeated trips to the Air India office to sort out my tickets.

I was mesmerized by Rome: the art, the history, the people. Men with arms slung casually over each other's shoulders, sharing a newspaper. Conversations with strangers—them in Italian, me in English—in which something somehow got said. Bars that served ice cream, juice, pastries, and alcohol.

But when I think of Italy, I think of the grace of that moment when a familiar face walked through the door of a random pensioni. I wonder, still, how I ever would have gotten myself up off that bed without that particular twist of fate.

—Sindee Ernst is a transplanted New Englander living in Baltimore County. In addition to writing her memoir, she composes banjo tunes, does traditional English and American dancing, and now takes care of all of her own travel plans.



I am not particularly sentimental, and my husband is definitely not a romantic. Over fifty years we have had our moments —shared adventures, special times, and favorite places that evoke in both of us memories that touch the heartstrings. Yet, during this time, many of our pursuits, endeavors, and travels have been undertaken without the other.

    In May 1993, my husband, Dave, was spending a month as an exchange artist in Maryland's sister province in China, Anhui. When his exhibits and lectures were over, he traveled to other parts of the country with a Chinese friend. His accommodations were not the usual tourist hotels, but the homes of villagers or inns. I heard from him only once because there was little chance of finding a phone in the type of places where his bath was heated with boiling water brought to his room in thermos bottles.

One day toward the end of his journey I was listening to the radio while driving to work. The talk on NPR was getting boring so I switched to classical music. A piece I was not familiar with had just started. A solo violin was being played, and it mesmerized me. It was so lovely that tears filled my eyes and fell into my lap. When it was over, the announcer said the name of the piece was the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto and it could be purchased at An Die Musik. I called the store, only to be told they had already sold the three copies in stock.

Two days later, Dave came home, full of tales and lovely souvenirs. One was a CD—the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto. He had heard it as he passed a music store in Guangzhou. Going inside to hear it more clearly, he suddenly missed me. When we compared notes and calculated the time difference, we were astonished to learn that we had heard the music on the same day at almost the same time.
My husband has always chalked it up to the law of probability, though he does admit the odds are miniscule. I know better—that day the gods looked on us with favor and sent a message of love across the universe. No cupid's bow was needed—just that of a violin, and a beautiful concerto.

—Barbara Orbock is a former special education teacher who now creates colored pencil artwork and writes essays and poetry.



I'm sitting in an airline office in Amman, Jordan, miserably waiting for my turn. I've just lost something very special to me: a small stone with a smaller hole in it that I found—or, I should say, that found me—during a visit to India with my mother eighteen months ago.

The trip was one of anticipation. I was finally bringing Mom to the country I had fallen deeply in love with. But it wasn't fun because I was a moody bitch, and for no good reason. It certainly wasn't Mom's fault. But I treated her like it was. By the time we got to the Taj Mahal I was even nastier than I had been for the two weeks we had been traveling.

We took off our shoes and walked around the famous domed building. I gave Mom hell for taking her time looking around. I wanted to see it; she wanted to experience it.

I stomped around a corner and onto something small but painful. Cursing, I bent down and picked up the stone I had stepped on. It was rectangular, about the size of a domino tile, with smooth rounded corners and a hole at one end. I couldn't understand how something so small and timeworn could have hurt so much. I closed my fist around it. It grew burning-hot-but-not in my hand.

As the not-hot-heat spread throughout my body, I saw Mom in the distance, looking as fragile and timeworn as the stone. I mentally kicked myself as I realized that despite my awful behavior, Mom had remained loving and strong. I limped over, gave her a big hug, whispered a short but ferocious apology into her ear, and spent the entire day feeling guilty, but strangely happy.

And as I sit in the airline office, feeling the profound absence of the stone that I always wore around my neck, I look up through its glass walls and see two Buddhist monks. I turn to my friend and jokingly say, "Oh, look, Buddhist monks. Maybe the Dalai Lama is here."

I look back outside and suddenly, there he is—the Dalai Lama. He turns around, catches my eye and smiles at me, then gets into a car and drives away.

And with that, the realization strikes me: The stone was never really mine. Its work is done. I no longer need a tangible object to remind me that fragility and strength go hand in hand, and to always treat people how I want to be treated—particularly those people I love.

—Jackie Sawiris is a half-Jordanian, half-Egyptian writer, director, and actor who can't seem to stay in Baltimore ... but always returns.


Want to learn how to get your essay into print? Stop by the "What You're Writing" session on September 29 at the Baltimore Book Festival. Held in the CityLit tent from 1:30 p.m. to 2:45 p.m., the session will include readings by past published essayists and advice from Urbanite editors on how to get your writing published in "What You're Writing." Participants (and the general public) are invited to submit a finished essay for possible publication at any time during the Book Festival, at the Urbanite table.
Go to www.baltimorebookfestival.com for more information.