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 […]
Here’s reason #5,001 (I’m counting): that writing is a worthwhile activity: it’s good for your brain. Allow me to digress a bit. I’m teaching myself to crochet. (Head on over to the blog if you want to see a photo of my first finished piece, a scarf heavy enough to qualify as a weighted blanket […]
(While I’m away teaching in France for the month, I’m running a few favorite letters from last year. We will be back to regular, new programming the first week in October. Meanwhile, if you want to come to France with me next year, click here for a look at this year’s program.) I have a […]
There’s a lot of noise in the world at the moment. Political, and societal to be sure. But there’s also all the information we get from the interwebs constantly, all day and even all night long. And much of it is designed to ensnare us—to click onto the website, read the news story, buy the […]
I’m going back through the second draft of my WIP novel, checking for places where I have to drop things in. Most of these are little things, like another mention of a physical object that figures in the plot (in this case, a necklace), or pumping up a description that didn’t get fully mounted on […]
Writing has been a slog for me lately. In the month of November, for Nanowrimo, I wrote over 50K words. 50,047, to be exact. And since then I’ve written under 4,000. Yeah. A slog. Here are some of my excuses for not writing: –Snow and ice storm –Christmas –My grandson’s birthday —Teaching a workshop on […]
Wherein I talk about what it takes to be a writer, in my humble opinion, anyway. To finish a book project, or even an article or short story. To get the book out in the world, either into the hands of an agent and editor, or publish it yourself, which is a whole other enterprise. […]
September is Writing Prompt Month! Actually, I have no idea if that’s true, but it sounds good, doesn’t it? Here are your prompts for the week: –What a fool he was. Yet still she was in love with him. –Rise and Shine! Bright, shiny new day! –Oh God, do I have to? –They argued all […]
Just in case you were thinking, while the cat’s away, the mice will play, no such luck. To give you something to do other than sit around and sob about my absence, I’ve decided to set up writing prompt posts for every Monday in September, with seven posts for you. One for each day. You […]
Writing a novel is, at heart, all about making shit up. That phrase–making shit up–became the constant refrain of my Mapping the Novel workshop at the Sitka Center last week. (It was the BEST workshop ever, mostly because of my wonderful students, but also because of the fabulous staff and the spectacular location. I could go […]
