I spent this just-past Thanksgiving weekend at the beach with a rotating cast of family members in attendance. It was a blast. And, I got some writing done. I woke up early every day and sat at the dining room table and wrote on my laptop. (It helped immeasurably that the house has no wi-fi.) […]
Years ago, as a freelance writer, I wrote a lot of articles about art. One of them was about the Makk family of artists, who lived in Hawaii. The big thing I remember from this article happened while I interviewed the Eva, the matriarch of the family. She told me how when she was a […]
(I've been working on this post for a few days. I planned to publish it yesterday and then things happened. Like having my granddaughter here. And getting a tattoo! Yes, you can tell me how brave I am! It is wonderful! I will post a photo when it is all healed. But, anyway, here's the […]
Reading a manuscript yesterday, I was reminded that, while most writing teachers (myself included) insist advocate that students write in scene, there are also instances when you should not write in scene. Sometimes writers dramatize events that don't warrant a full scene. And then the writing just seems flabby. Not much is happening, but there's […]
During one of the free sessions I did last month, I talked with a writer about foreshadowing and how sometimes getting it in is really clunky. Like, you might as well scream it from the rooftops, "I'm foreshadowing something important here," clunky. And since I went right from that session to working on a chapter […]
