Summer Brennan

Paris

Author at A Year of Writing Dangerously

Author at A Writer's Notebook

Articles

Something About Tuesdays?

2 weeks ago | awritersnotebook.org | Summer Brennan

Dear Friend,So this is the second week now that I’ve found Tuesday to be a more amenable day for writing to you than Sunday. Go figure. Even so, I fear that I don’t have anything very interesting to say. I suppose it was a “keep your head down” kind of a week. A day arrives, and one does one’s best until it’s time to go to b…Keep reading with a 7-day free trialSubscribe to A Writer's Notebook to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
The nosy cab driver, and lessons in rejection.

3 weeks ago | awritersnotebook.org | Summer Brennan

Meditation, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. (Why Bouguereau again? Why not?)Dear Friend,I had this cab driver the other day. I try not to take many cabs, but I was running late to my appointment at the Hôpital Necker and so I hailed one. My driver was a woman who I can’t imagine was younger than 80. If she was 75, it was a very weathered 75 (or a very we…
Eros Is Dead. Long Live Eros.

1 month ago | awritersnotebook.org | Summer Brennan

Dear Friend,Yesterday I was walking down the rue Bachaumont on my way to the public garden where I like to sit, when I noticed that someone had stuck some roses into the metal slats of a bike rack. I picked one up. It was dark pink and richly fragrant, sweet and peppery in that way that very fragrant roses can sometimes be. I took it and carried it with me, and because of that people smiled at me.
The List

1 month ago | awritersnotebook.org | Summer Brennan

Dear Friend,Here is a thing you can actually do. You can sit down and make a list of every person you have ever loved in your life. You can put on it your childhood friends, the ones you knew before you knew yourself, when you were still in the sandbox, when you were still in diapers. You can put the girl who stood beside you in lines for movies at the mall, your hands clutching Orange Julius. You can put the boy with an eye patch who had too many sisters.
A Letter

1 month ago | awritersnotebook.org | Summer Brennan

Dear Friend,Hi, hi. It’s not Sunday. It’s been a while. But here is a letter. Waiting for the right time to do something can often mean that it never happens. I’ve been ill, but you know that. Very simple days still feel like an obstacle course. But I don’t want to talk about any of that.
Student Discount $12 Per Year

2 months ago | awritersnotebook.org | Summer Brennan

Hi everyone,I’m running another “student of life” discount this week, where I offer an annual subscription to my newsletter for just $12. I know that a weekly letter is not the same thing that I offered in the past, but I am trying to hold things together here as best I can while dealing with this diagnosis of a rare blood cancer. This is the only income I have right now, and I’m paying for all of my treatments, imaging, medications, and appointments by myself.
A Bouquet of Lilies

2 months ago | awritersnotebook.org | Summer Brennan

Dear Friend,I’m sitting here in my living room and the sun has gone down. I have a candle lit. I cleaned the apartment today, and it took absolutely all of my energy. I’m trying to do it every week to keep things manageable. Then I went for my mandatory daily walk, down to the river and then back.
Hello ðŸ‘‹

Mar 23, 2025 | awritersnotebook.org | Summer Brennan

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More of a postcard, really.

Mar 16, 2025 | awritersnotebook.org | Summer Brennan

Dear Friend,The magnolias and the dogwoods are blooming in the park at Les Halles, where teenagers from the outer suburbs come in via the RER trains to sit on the concrete benches and smoke cigarettes and eat fast food in the city center. I don’t have much that I can share with you this week.
A Promise To A Friend

Mar 9, 2025 | awritersnotebook.org | Summer Brennan

Dear Friend,I am writing to you from the Luxembourg Gardens, and it’s a warm day for early March, with a little bit of sun shining from behind a thin veil of gray clouds. All of the trees that I can see are naked, but if I look more closely at the chestnut branches overhead, I can see that the buds of the leaves are visible, though not yet breaking.