Morning, Lab Coats. The last quarter of the year is for starting over. Not January/Feb/March, but Oct/Nov/Dec.

starting over in Irene, our screened-in porch that now has windows and an exterior door, October 2025

Yes, this time gets crazy with commitments and holidays and trying to keep what’s-what straight, that’s true enough. But there is something vibrant about a harvest moon, a turn of the weather (late as it is this year), a crackle of leaves underfoot, and the taste of pumpkin or cider or pie that brings us back to basics — well, brings ME back to home and hearth and to the reasons I write.

Home and hearth are for everyone — or, I dearly want them to be. They are foundational. They are where we begin, the doors we step out from into the world, and the places we return to. We reinvent this home and hearth as we grow up: we imagine it, we search for it, define it, nurture it, and we master it, too, if we can.

All our lives we work to master the feeling of “this is where I belong.” I call it charting the geography of the heart.

This geography carries with it the creation of identity, so, self-discovery.

Think of Dickens and the first line of David Copperfield: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

For David Copperfield, belonging is everything. If we don’t belong — to someone, to something, to a cause, to a community, and to ourselves, especially — what do we have of value in this world, and how do we function?

To that end, I’d like to focus this first Second Sunday Live! on “How We Write About Home.” It could also be “How We Write About a Lack of Home.” Or lack of belonging. There you have it, a unity of opposites, eh?

It can be home in your body, home in your mind, home as a series of different physical places you’ve lived. How do we write about this in ways that offer us solace or understanding while also connecting with a reader? There are many mentor texts that show us the way.

Bring one with you, if you have it at hand, and tell us about it. I will have some to share, as well as some thoughts from my writing experience, and we will write together to an Exercise I bring us to experiment with.

If you are reading this and want to become a Lab Coat and write with us, you can do that here. We meet this Sunday, Oct. 12 at 11amET until 12:15pm.

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