I have begun a new season in my life. On New Year’s Day this year (2022) I looked out over the panorama of the coming year and I could already see that it was going to be a year of change. Like a lot of change, big changes. What I didn’t know was that there…
I heard some advice at the writing conference I went to last spring, and I keep hearing it. Or at least I keep repeating it and other authors nod their heads like they are familiar with it. If you haven’t already guessed from the title of this blog entry, the advice is for writers to…
This afternoon I am doing a thing. I have been building up to it lately, though I might have been building up to it for years. There is a part of me, for the last several months, that has thought, “May, 2022. It’ll come soon enough.” Turns out it’s not soon enough. So this afternoon…
After I posted the last blog entry (“Published!), WordPress notified me that it was the 500th blog post on The Starving Artist. Whew! So I did a little digging and found out this, as well: my first post was on October 17, 2012, “A Meandering History of The Starving Artist.” My first book review was…
Well, folks, I have been published. I have been pushing harder and harder over the Pandemic, trying to veeeery slowly re-warm up my writing career so that when I am done homeschooling (May of 2022) I will have a place to jump from. I am still extremely far from writing full-time but I am so…
While a fellow at Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing’s annual conference earlier this year, I ended up hanging with the other parent-writer fellows and parent-writers (like in the Zooms and chats, because the conference was Pandemic-virtual). One of these people was the impressive Sarah Twombly. There was just something about her… she did give…
As I have said before, since I was a little girl I have been looking forward to the milestones on the journey of the writing life. This summer I encountered a milestone that I didn’t see coming. Indeed, I didn’t know it was a thing to look for. Maybe you do and that makes you…
It’s not that I can’t see what others would see in J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. But I’m not a teenager and I don’t live in the mid-century past. I can also understand that his writing was something fresh and special and that his insistence that it stay the way it was…
I already wrote a blog recently about my making an altered book. I am only one page and half a cover in, by the way, because my life continues to be too busy for life. But enough about first world problems for a second. I have enjoyed so much figuring out how to make an…
My goal this year (among many other goals) is to read a writing book once every two months. So, six total. Not doing terribly when I finished the third, Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing in June. (Actually, that’s completely on track. I am completely not on track with most of my other…
There are many things that writers dream of. There is this whole writer-life that exists out on the horizons, as seen from the vantage point of a beginning writer. For many of us, these dreams begin when we are still children. That would be me. Dreams of publication and book tours, meeting the editor for…
I have often recommended the book Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and thought of it warmly. I was a little surprised, then, when I pulled it off the shelf to do a re-read and a review and my notes and markings stopped about two-thirds of the way through. Hmm… So, I liked the book…
A couple weeks ago I attended a (virtual) seminar. The speaker/teacher was Scott Reintgen and the title of the seminar was “How to Get an Agent and Navigate Publishing.” This was a lot to cover in an hour and a half on a Monday night, but the presentation was great and the information was quite…
Tech doesn’t usually interest me. In fact, it frustrates and disgusts me more than interests or amazes me. I still have fantasies in which I am sitting in my front window in the chair and I am reading and sipping tea and contemplating my evening and whether I will paint or embroider and the TV…
I really didn’t think that I would go three weeks without posting a blog post, not any time during this (pandemic) season, anyhow. Alas I did go almost three weeks without posting or even maintaining the blog. What can I say? I was sick. Did I have the Covid? I do not know. I think—by…
I may be a little under the weather. You hate to admit such a thing in a pandemic, because not only is it panic-inducing for you and your loved ones, but it also comes with a certain amount of ostracizing. Rest assured, my children and I—who are very mildly ill (probably a cold)—have cancelled all…
I am looking for an agent for my novel. As for going indie, I do not have the time, resources, or availability to package and market my books while I am also home schooling and teaching at a co-op (and all those other things I do, too). There are also things that really appeal about…
I have been looking for an agent, which is a blog post for another day. As part of this process, I have had to cozy up to agents with a remark or two in each query, indicating that I understood who they were and why I have picked them out of the thousands of agents,…
I’m on a roll here with the blog. I have been meaning to “complete” the lists of Best Books for years, and I am almost there! I have two more lists left (religion and plays), but they are in sight, during this stay-at-home order. I am an avid list maker, and I will admit that…
During the Stay-at-Home order, I have had the opportunity to watch more movies than I usually do. Still, it’s not a tremendous amount, as I have a lot of cooking, cleaning, schooling, and writing to do, not to mention projects here and there and everywhere. But that is the reason I have been able to…
the starving artist 