Facing a rewrite can be difficult, if not downright daunting. You've written a draft (or two, or three), gotten feedback, and now you're ready to make the changes in your manuscript. So you open the file on your computer….and sit there and stare at the words on the page. Let's admit it, sometimes confronting a […]
A couple weeks ago my dining room table was covered with china, cut glass, pitchers, and an odd assortment of knick-knacks. This was all stuff brought over from my Mom's house, which we were cleaning out before an estate sale. I was really happy with all the things I'd claimed but the problem was that […]
A theme is emerging as we near the official start of winter. A friend emails that she's tired, depressed and depleted, the end result of consistent beating herself up for not writing. Never mind that a beloved friend of hers recently died, her business, like so many others, is rapidly changing, and she suddenly finds […]
where it is illegal to look different from anyone else. It is a requirement here that you be thin, tan, have long hair, wear sunglasses and pout, AND be young. Thus if you are not young it is required that you go get plastic surgery really, really fast. And then you look like you are […]
My son went through a long comic book phase when he was a pre-teen, which involved me driving him to comic book stores and conventions and then standing around waiting for him. Having nothing better to do, I picked up comic books and began to read and in this way grew to love the form. […]
A couple months ago I wrote a post titled Write Three Pages a Day and You’ll Be Happy. This command, and the post I wrote about it, are all true. I believe this statement with all my heart, because I believe that as writers, we must write regularly to be happy. However…. Upon rare occasion, […]
I may have already written about this before–and I reserve the right to write about it again. Does anyone else have that thing where you forget what you’ve written? It’s not age, or fading brain cells, it comes from writing a lot and being so present with what I’m writing that I forget everything that […]
I flew down to LA on Friday and at the moment I'm staying in Pasadena. It is probably in the mid to high 90s at the moment, but yesterday and Friday, the temps were around 106-107. Gee-zus. This is way too hot for an Oregon native like me, especially given that we've not had much […]
I'm working on a workshop called Writing Abundance that I'll be presenting in September at the Path and Pen conference in Nashville. It's also going to be an E-book, for sale on this very site. Conveniently enough, all the elements of writing abundance fall into categories that all start with C. How cool is that? […]
There’s nothing better than sleeping with the windows open, and last night was one of the first nights that’s been possible here. This morning I woke at 5:30 to the sound of birdsong. This is without a doubt the best possible way to wake up in the world, even if it was half an hour […]
