If you hate spoilers, don’t look at the picture of the horses. Oh. Too late. Now you’re stuck reading a book review. I suppose if I were a truly omnivorous reader, I would value every reading experience equally. But I don’t. For instance, I avoid reading those small print multi-page mailings I occasionally receive from […]
I wonder sometimes, where you are. That’s right. You. Right now, I mean, as you read this blog entry. It is mid afternoon on a sunny winter day where I am and my office, the one remaining room in my apartment which needs painting is looking unusually cheerful. Primarily because I have reached a milestone […]
3 X 5 index cards are one of the best inventions of mankind, right up there with fire and ice cream sundaes. Index cards are the perfect size for writing down one thought. Or for listing tiny quantities, like five things to pick up at the store. Or for tucking blank in my pocket for […]
Reduce, reuse, recycle, re-purpose. It seems to be a requirement for human beings that we re-purpose things. For instance, my paper clip jar is a re-purposed orange blossom honey jar. I like it because even though I washed the jar out thoroughly before I filled it with paperclips, for years the lid gave off the faint […]
Indie publishing involves formatting. Ugh. I was planning to write an erudite assessment of Anne Tyler’s Vinegar Girl, because I have always disliked The Taming of the Shrew. Tyler came up with a charming “doesn’t make you want to throw up” version. But I am not feeling intellectual today. Because I spent the day formatting. No. Today […]
Collecting Benefits from Self Employment. I bet you woke up this morning thinking, “What exactly is the difference between an axiom and an idiom?” I know I did. Being able to take time to explore questions like this is one of the benefits of self employment. Actually, I was wondering specifically whether “a day late […]
“Fiction is a story someone made up.” Miss Wood tapped her desk for emphasis. “Non-fiction is fact. You find non-fiction in an encyclopedia or in a newspaper so you know it is true.” This is how my sixth grade teacher Miss Wood once explained the difference between fiction and non-fiction. I’m going to pause now […]
Finishing and Letting Go are Not the Same Things. So much of writing a novel is about beginning it – plotting, character exploration. Beginnings are optimism incarnate. But finishing has a distinct flavor too, a bittersweet tang. Today I finished novel number three. Really finished. Drafting, spelling and grammar checking, fixing sequence errors, sending it […]
A Royal Visit from a Woodchuck is an honor. Although maybe a painful one. There is no animal quite as full of himself as a woodchuck when he is sauntering into your garden to pillage. He carries himself with the bearing of a duke coming to check out his feudal holdings. Even when he climbs […]
Scary times in the Writer’s Corral. I sent a manuscript off to an editor for the first time ever and waited with baited breath to see what she said. It’s one thing to write a contemporary romance. It’s a totally different thing to let a person who reads books for a living assess what you wrote. Aaack! […]