My daughter is grown and gone, married now and thinking about having kids of her own (if the stupid army would ever let her husband come home). But sometimes often she comes to the house to do her laundry. Which is why, last week, I ended up down the basement folding a large load of […]
It rained yesterday. A lot. I drove home from a meeting on the freeway last night and waves of water splashed over the windshield, just like in winter. But I didn't mind. All day yesterday I waited for the rain to come in. It was hot and muggy in the morning, but there were hopeful […]
I have a love-hate relationship with the self-help industry. Mostly, I love it. Send me an email detailing the latest way to develop more insight and I'll click on your link any day. Show me an ad promoting some kind of "You Can Achieve More With Your Life" workshop and I'll read your long sales […]
I've been a bit distracted lately, which has caused me to Not Write. First of all, it is hot. Not like 90-degree hot. Oh, no, that's not good enough for us. We are suffering through 106+ weather, which is hot, hot, hot. It is so hot that we poor Portlanders don't know what to do […]
Awhile back I wrote a post called The Rule of Threes. In re-pondering this again recently, the thought occurs that I'm not generally much of a rule follower. In fact, you might even accurately describe me as a person who is incapable of following rules. I break them like crazy in real life (which is […]
Facing a rewrite can be difficult, if not downright daunting. You've written a draft (or two, or three), gotten feedback, and now you're ready to make the changes in your manuscript. So you open the file on your computer….and sit there and stare at the words on the page. Let's admit it, sometimes confronting a […]
A couple weeks ago my dining room table was covered with china, cut glass, pitchers, and an odd assortment of knick-knacks. This was all stuff brought over from my Mom's house, which we were cleaning out before an estate sale. I was really happy with all the things I'd claimed but the problem was that […]
A few days ago I wrote a post titled, What About Not Writing? which pondered the question of whether it was ever a good idea to take a break from writing. As is often the case, the post garnered some interesting responses, because, well, I have fabulously interesting readers (Brief aside: as a general rule, […]
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about creativity with a purpose. As usual, I banged the drum for writing on a regular basis. (This is a familiar subject matter for me, as attested to by these posts, too: Getting Up at 5 AM, Techniques for Writing Flow, and Ah, But Here's the Rub, to name […]
I was reading a manuscript the other day and the writer had used a series of two phrases to describe something. My antenna went up and I made a comment that in the American culture, we like things in threes. I've conveniently named this The Rule of Threes, though to my knowledge there is really […]
