Author Archives

Bill Pearse publishes memoir, travel journals, poetry and prose, and lives in the Pacific Northwest.

• Confessions of an under-performing project manager

  By Bill Pearse on May 18, 2014 • ( 6 )

  

  It’s mid-year review time, and this year they’ve renamed the levels and taken care to cascade training about it. It’s a “discussion” not a review, and that’s an important distinction. But still, there’s a diagram that looks like a dart-board… Read More ›

• Cow dung in foreground

  By Bill Pearse on May 4, 2014 • ( 10 )

  

  Lily and I drive up the Teanaway to get away, bond. We pull the Pilot over at mile marker 11, where the trail report says you should start: pass the gate that says No Motorized Vehicles, head up the private… Read More ›

• The Art of Make Believe (#mywritingprocess)

  By Bill Pearse on April 30, 2014 • ( 13 )

  

  It’s true, writers like nothing more than to write about writing, to postpone the real work (of writing). And like the game of golf, you get lucky with a few strokes and then spend the rest of your life thinking… Read More ›

• A Near-Life Experience

  By Bill Pearse on April 15, 2014 • ( 16 )

  

  I drank too much and stopped in 2001, but started again about nine months later. I told my doctor I stopped drinking and when he asked if I was alright I started crying and so he gave me the number… Read More ›

• The Notes Between The Keys

  By Bill Pearse on February 4, 2014 • ( 16 )

  

  I spent the last year here rebuilding my confidence as a writer, forcing myself to see my life as noteworthy every day, gathering inspiration. I didn’t know what I was doing, and half-hoped the sheer pursuit of a Broken Down… Read More ›

• Climbing cocks, steep peaks, dry tools

  By Bill Pearse on January 25, 2014 • ( 14 )

  

  When I look deep inside myself to remember why I joined the Mountaineers climbing club, the only reason I can come up with is that I’m cocky. It may be a male-thing, too. I had already climbed Mount Rainier, which… Read More ›

• Trying on masks (2)

  By Bill Pearse on January 22, 2014 • ( 8 )

  This is the second in a series of posts where you can’t trust the narrator and the narrator’s not me, inspired by a T.C. Boyle short story. The night fell and so did the frogs and the crows, they all… Read More ›

• Heads buried in books, Powell’s, Portland

  By Bill Pearse on January 20, 2014 • ( 17 )

  

  We pass Powell’s bookstore in Portland, which says it’s the largest independent bookstore in the world and sure feels that way. Even though it’s a sunny afternoon in January all the seats are full of people not with tablets or… Read More ›

• The quality vs. quantity dilemma of blogging

  By Bill Pearse on January 15, 2014 • ( 25 )

  In manufacturing, art, blogging…quality and quantity aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s true, you can have both (high output and high quality), but one often suffers at the expense of the other. You take hours to craft a blog and so you… Read More ›

• Running the days out like tap water

  By Bill Pearse on January 13, 2014 • ( 15 )

  I think about Charlotte coming down the steps in the morning, her hair a bird’s nest, the pitter-patter of bare feet across the floor. When it was especially hard early on in parenting, Dawn reminded me it wouldn’t always be… Read More ›