An email came into my inbox this week with the subject Deep Inner Magic. Being a sucker for such things, I clicked. It was a promo for a webinar that didn’t interest me much, but the phrase stuck with me. As I pondered why, I realized it’s because deep inner magic is what I believe […]
I have it. You do too. But the funny thing is, most of the time I look at you and think you don’t have it. And you most likely look at me and feel the same. But every human being on the planet, except for maybe Queen Elizabeth or Elon Musk or Gwyneth Paltrow, has […]
This has been a crazy week. Besides the usual round of appointments and teaching commitments (which I love), my daughter had hand surgery after slicing a tendon and a couple of nerves in her thumb. Thus, I’ve been tending small children even more than usual. I know, you’ve probably had a crazy week, too. And […]
Story takes effort. Sometimes at night I sit in front of the TV and I don’t have the energy to watch anything more than a thirty-minute sitcom, or a singing reality show, which I can digest in small bites and turn off when I get bored. Because the mental effort of engaging with a longer […]
The other night, over a writer’s dinner, my friend Angie mentioned a writing tidbit she’d received from a class she’d taken with James N. Frey, of How to Write a Damn Good Novel fame. (Not the James Frey of A Million Little Pieces fame.) It was this: make your reader feel the emotion, not just your […]
Last weekend, I hit a creative wall. It wasn’t full-blown writer’s block, mind you, but a wall. Maybe a half-wall. I’d been working steadily and strongly all week on a couple of chapters and finished them. That got me to a natural stopping place before the next action began. Only problem was, I wasn’t sure […]
If there’s one thing I know about writing, it’s that not all techniques work for every writer. Not only that, but what works for one writer one time may not work the next time. The system you use to write your novel the first time out just doesn’t fit the next time out. The way […]
What are your priorities as a writer? Do you have a firm sense of them? Knowing what comes first in your career and life can help you take hold of your time management. I started thinking about this after reading an article in the May 2018 issue of the Romance Writers Report, the magazine of […]
Writing, at heart, is simple. All you have to do is put pen to paper, one word at a time. As Margaret Atwood says, “A word after a word after a word is power.” And yet, we make it hard. We resist that power. We make judgements about ourselves and our pages. Which, of course, […]
As you might have guessed, I am home from France. Jet lag has not been terrible this time. We got home Tuesday evening and as I write this on Friday, I’m feeling pretty good. Which gives me time to dig into all the things that got put on hold while I was gone. And, boy, […]
