Finally, I have a chance to explain what the word ekphrastic means. I can barely remember how to spell it now. And, funnily enough, Wikipedia spells it differently than I do. I got my spelling from Alvin Knox, the brilliant poet and my fellow colleague at The Loft, and truthfully? Even though I am guilty […]
…because I have a good story to tell. Yesterday Linda and I set off from Gatlinburg to visit the Biltmore Estates in Asheville, North Carolina. But, ahem, we kinda got lost. Okay we really got lost. (Note to self and everyone else: do not rely on those in-car navigation systems.) I was driving Linda’s gigo […]
At least I think I know. But you will have to wait a bit for erudite me to enlighten you on that, because first you must suffer through an update of my travels. I’m in Gatlinburg, at a beautiful resort perched on the side of a mountain (well, they call them mountains in these parts, […]
I’m leaving on a jet plane tomorrow. (I know, I know, I can’t help it–I have all these old songs playing in my head.) I’ll be in Nashville for the Loft Literary Day, which is on Saturday. I get to meet with students and sit and enjoy the lectures of other mentors. Usually I am […]
….you are never not thinking about your current project, at least somewhere in the dim recesses of your mind. When working on a novel or screenplay or other long project, you are always, always, always, aware that any free time could best be spent by working on it. You are constantly aware that everything in […]
One of my favorite authors of all time died today. Madeleine L’Engle died in a nursing home in Connecticut at age 88. She was best known, of course, for her book A Wrinkle in Time, which my sister and I read and re-read and read again as we were growing up. I read it to […]
Let me tell you right up front, I had no intention of making this series on critiquing into a series. But I kept talking to people about it, and getting great comments, and so here were are, suddenly on part four. Quel surprise! Crystal left a comment to Part Three about how much she hated […]
Some of you out there might have actual plans to write this weekend, unlike moi. Despite having a long list of writerly things to do, I have so instead, so far this weekend: been to Friday Happy Hour, spent three flippin’ hours at the new Ikea, watched two episodes of Big Love on demand, cleaned […]
I already wrote about being critiqued not once, but twice, (you can read the first two posts here and here.) But I had another thought about the whole process. Dying to hear it, aren’t you? Just what you’ve been desperate to read on this last official Saturday of summer? Here goes: It’s all about the […]
The Writing Nag, whose blog I adore because she nags, in an oh-so-sweet-way, writers to keep working, suggested this topic for a post: How do you find your niche as a writer? Good question. Short answer: I don’t know. No, that’s not really true. But I do sometimes bill myself as a "Renaissance writer in […]
