First of all, Happy Mother’s Day to those of you who are mothers. The best mother’s day I ever had was the one in which I took myself out to a writer’s tea for the day—leaving my young children behind. Anyway, to the rest of you—Happy Wise Women’s Day. Is that a thing? I thought […]
Okay, so I probably should have done this last week, because we are already six days into the month, but I just thought of it. I’m talking about a new feature I’m trying—a monthly round-up of what’s going on in my writing life. Hopefully you will find things of use to you. Outside my office […]
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about how, really, the only writing ritual that works is opening the file and starting to write. There’s no magic mug to drink from, or a systematic routine that will all of a sudden have you flinging words at the page. You just have to do […]
Routine. Since returning home from France a week and a half ago, I’ve struggled with establishing a writing routine. In France, I followed the same routine as I have here at home for many years: wake up, get coffee, sit down to the computer and write. Okay, I will admit to looking at email while […]
This week I read an ominous post on a friend’s Facebook feed. Something to the effect that people were praying for her, but there was no specific information beyond that. I messaged a mutual friend and learned that the worst had happened: my friend had died. I’m very far away from home, and so there […]
So, every year I choose a word to represent the year. Actually, most years I choose three words. And usually I write a blog post about my words in December. Well, December is long gone and I never wrote the blog post. And that’s because I felt uninspired about choosing a word–or words. Usually they […]
One day this week, I rose at 5 AM. I worked for an hour and a half—nailed the organization of a book project—and then drove to my son’s house for emergency babysitting duty at 6:30. By 9 AM that morning I’d knocked a big item off my to-do list, watched George, eaten breakfast and done […]
This morning when I got up at my usual early hour (made even earlier this week with the time switch), I had plans to work on the rewrite of my novel. Because that’s what I do when I get up early to write. It is my sacred time, devoted only to writing fiction. (Except for […]
This week. It couldn’t have been more awful. The terrible tragedy in Las Vegas, coming on the heels of a month of devastating natural disasters, was almost too much to bear. People I know and love are suffering from these events. And on top of all that, I have a friend and a family member […]
I’m writing this to you at 4:30 in the morning, sitting at my desk back home in Portland. Yes, you read that right: 4:30 AM. Because: jet lag. I’ve been waking at this hour every day since we returned home from France on Tuesday night. It’s great for getting writing done, but hell for trying […]
