I went to school for English literature. In the end, I graduated with a major in philosophy and a minor in English literature, but I was one class away from a double-major and spent a lot of my time doing things like being on the literary magazine staff and writing poetry, not to mention reading.…
The Messy Lives of Book People by Phaedra Patrick is, yes, one of those books that appeals to readers by using a title and premise that are them, relatable. “Book people” is in the title. And it’s about, well, book people. Liv Green is about to be an empty nester. She married and had kids…
It is April 11, which means I am arriving at Camp Nanowrimo eleven days late. This is a virtual thing, so no camp counselor is looking down over their nose and clipboard at me, tapping their pencil on the page. I knew I was going to miss a few days of camp due to spring…
I don’t know what I think about online classes. There’s a part of me that thinks this is the future for a lot of people and more power to them, but there is also this little, snobby voice in the back of my head that’s like, “That can’t be good or even half as quality.”…
And I started writing this post in November. I want to finish it now, but it contains some timely content. I am going to leave it as it is and put this little note of explanation at the top. It’s November, so Republican or Democrat, right? Wrong. Who cares! It’s Nanowrimo and writers are writing-in…
I was recently helping my daughter with one of her college application questions—okay, it wasn’t that recent; it was a few months ago. But when I was done helping her edit said question, I jotted down a note to blog about what I had learned from the experience. I haven’t needed that note until now…
Even since I decided to own that hikes and walks in nature help me unfurl story snags and otherwise come up with writing ideas, I have been spending one morning per week (usually Thursday) on a hike followed by the afternoon at a coffee shop (actually putting words on the page). I have a usual…
It’s been a minute (more than a month) since I went to Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities for a week-long writing residency. If you’ve been around, you might recognize that place or even that sentence, because it was my fourth residency there (and my fifth residency (and one fellowship) total). What could I…
The idea behind “fast-drafting” is to prepare yourself ahead of time so that when you get to the point when you are ready to write your first draft, you can just buckle down and fly through it. You don’t work backwards, revise, edit, or get distracted. You don’t even worry all that much about quality.…
I’ve run into K. M. Weiland several times on the internet and, I think, in Writer’s Digest. She has an award-winning website for writing help and I believe I have subscribed to her emails in the past. I think that some of this happened years ago when I was self-/indie-publishing, so I still associate her…
Note: I don’t know why I was holding this review, exactly, but here it is. Probably I was too busy writing the great American novel (or an awesome, best-selling YA fantasy trilogy). I knew that for this year’s National Novel Writing Month (November), I wanted to write a novel I had in my head which…
I thought I had won Nanowrimo before. Officially, according to their website, I haven’t even won Camp Nanowrimo (during which you set your own word goal in the summer), but I had come ridiculously close (less than 2000 words) to winning Nano the year I started The Journey of Clement Fancywater (in 2014). Well then,…
Every writer should have a writing group. I say this, but surely there can’t be a writing group with like-talented writers for every writer in every community. So I guess what I mean is, I am thankful for my writing group. A small group (capped at six since its founding) that is joined by invite…
It takes an effort to accomplish Nanowrimo and to do other things besides Nanowrimo that you just can’t function without… (For me, this includes cleaning, laundry, making meals, dishes, helping kids with homework, keeping up on the college application process, random appointments like for doctors and grooming, one week singing at church, and always Thanksgiving,…
So if you are not aware of Nanowrimo, you won’t be aware of Preptober. If you don’t plan to write a novel, then this blog post won’t be of any use to you except as a curiosity. If, however, you are going to write something—especially a novel—some day, then this is a good thing to…
I am gearing up for Nanowrimo 2022! If you don’t know what Nanowrimo is, you can read my old blog post HERE. Or I can give you the gist: Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month and it’s been around for, what?, twenty years? The basic and original premise is an online space/club for people…
I can’t seem to get much published (yet. I’m being a little facetious as I’ve technically only been doing this full-time, head-on for a few months, during which I had two family vacations, Covid, and some major life transitions). These days, actually, I am sitting down to work, heading on Tuesdays to my workshare, attending…
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…
the starving artist 