When my granddaughter Olivia was a toddler, just learning to talk, she used to suddenly stop what she was doing, say, “need something,” and stagger in a babyish sort of way to the kitchen. When Livie said “need something” she always meant food, so it was easy to satisfy her. Alas, it is often not […]
This Tuesday is my birthday. No, I won’t tell you how old I am going to be. Suffice it to say I don’t feel as old as I am. And, because it is my birthday, I’m giving you presents! Here’s the deal. It is hot here in Portland at the moment (98 degrees) and I […]
A client/friend emailed me. (Hi, Shari). Due to things happening in life, as they do, she hasn’t been able to write for a while. And this got me thinking—shit happens. And sometimes you find yourself without a single second, or a free brain cell, to write. Maybe you just had a baby, or a death […]
Nearly all my writing life I’ve considered myself a planner. But for the last two books I’ve written, apparently I’ve been pantsing like crazy. And it hasn’t worked all that well. I will share my sad story, but first some definitions for those of you who might not know: Pantsers write by the seat of […]
How well do you know yourself as a writer? Know how to motivate yourself, operate at your most productive, achieve your writing dreams? After all these years of writing about these exact topics I thought I knew myself pretty well. Turns out that’s not true. I’m taking a class called Write Better, Write Faster, about […]
Last Saturday, I co-lead a workshop on motivation. We chose this topic because while I was in France, I realized that the motivation of my protagonist was weak. Very weak. And damned if that didn’t affect the whole plot, making it saggy in places and utterly not logical in others. Neither of which are good […]
I was meditating this morning. My legs twitched. I was antsy in my seat. My eyebrow itched and finally I succumbed and scratched it. My back tingled. All these things took my attention away from my mantra–Hum Sah. And then I started thinking about emails I needed to write and work I had to complete. […]
After a month-long writing retreat in France, I am home! The trip back was even more chaotic than the journey there, but we made it. So here I am at home in Portland, smack in the middle of chaos. While I was gone, my daughter and her family moved in (that includes two small boys). […]
I am in France. In Ceret, a small town in the Languedoc region, to be exact. I am here on a writing retreat and this morning, I’ve hit my goal of 2,000 words (a little over, actually), wandered around the town, then drove to the seaside village of Collioure to buy Soupe de Poisson. (Fish […]
Ah, rewriting. So fun! So engaging! So intense! I’m serious, I actually really like it. But it can also be mind-boggling. Where to begin? How to approach it? What to do? One concept that may be useful to you is that of draft passes. I’ve done this myself and recommended it to others, but I’ve […]
