My New York Times story: Will You Take Our Dying Sex Plant?
My ex-husband saw our plant as dead; I saw it as alive. I had no choice other than to let it go. My New York Times Tiny Love Story.
Yesterday, my words appeared in print in The New York Times, 98 of them, to be exact. Because I’m living in Costa Rica right now, I couldn’t get the paper myself. A friend bought me a copy for when I get back and sent me the video below. It makes me so happy seeing my Tiny Love Story, and the plant I kept alive for 7 years, on page 3 of the newspaper, even only in video.
You can read it online here, or below.
GETTING INTO THE TIMES
Since Substack is all about process, here’s how it happened for me.
I had written an essay version of this story, but it was a bit short for a Modern Love piece, and I didn’t want to force length. The metaphor of the sex plant was so apt that it felt more natural to condense it into 100 words or less for their Tiny Love Stories column.
I submitted the shortened-version with this online portal. One week later, they emailed me to say they wanted to publish my piece that day. With my permission, it was up two hours later, along with a low-quality picture from 20…
