A writer is nothing without ideas. Ideas are so important to our craft that I do a whole class on them. Where do ideas come from? One place they come from is observation. Which means the ability to see is vital to the writer. Here's the deal: we get wrapped up in our stuff really […]
A Post Wherein I Explore Two Approachs to Writing and Confess I Don't Know Which is Best. Let's begin with balance. It has been a bit of a massive buzz word the past few years, with experts telling us we need it in our lives and offering advice on how to achieve it. Seems it's […]
I do my best to stay positive about writing. I feel lucky every day that my passion is writing, and I think most of you do, too. So even on days when I feel like I have a million things to grouse about, I try to find a way to be positive about something. Because […]
I was writing away on my new novel when suddenly the ex-husband from a novel I'd started and abandoned walked on. He's my new favorite character, ever, and his insistent good cheer is going to make a great counterpoint to my confused, grieving heroine. I adore this guy. But how weird is it that he […]
I'm going to be away the last week in April (at the Diamond writing retreat I'm co-leading) and the first week of May (in Maui, for a spiritual retreat with the women of my church.) The Diamond retreat is at an old hotel that was once a stagecoach stop that does not have Wi-Fi or […]
The press that will print my book. Kidding. On Monday, I told you that a small publishing house has agreed to publish my novel. Today, I'm going to tell the story of how it came about. (It feels a little weird to be writing so much about it, seeing as how all I know so […]
Here's something I forget: We write to figure things out. We write to discover what we know. We write to uncover what we don't know. And yet. We sit down to the page and think we have to be experts. We sit down to write and think it has to come out perfect. We sit […]
Okay, in the last post in this series, I said it was the final article. The end, finito, donezo. Ha! Because the other day, while working on setting in my own novel, the thought occurred: I left setting out of my series on prepping for the novel. Duh. This from a woman who wrote her […]
So, I've written three novels now. The first was a crappy mystery that never went anywhere (though recently when I found a copy of it, I realized it was better than I remembered.) The second was my MFA novel and its not half bad, it's just got a plot that doesn't quite work. I promised […]
When you're a writer, you are always pulled to write. If you're like me, and I fancy that you are, because we writers share odd (yet wonderful) traits, you're constantly thinking, I should be writing. Or, I wish I was writing. Or, why aren't I writing? The pull of the story is always with […]
