A Wall of Cold Cereal
Yesterday I’d hit a wall in my writing, as I tried to push my NaNoWriMo novel forward. But it was awful. Sometimes I think bringing forth a novel is a lot like childbirth. Painful, a total body experience, a lot of work, and quite as much a spiritual effort as a physical and mental one. […]
What Questions to Ask in the First Draft of a Novel
I love the first draft. It’s a world of discovery. Who are these people? What are their strengths, weaknesses, fears? What things should they face that will help them become who they were always meant to be, inside and out? What kind of a world should they encounter? What internal and external forces should be […]
Research and the Modern Writer
This has got to be the best time in the history of the world to be a writer. Not only are there a thousand different outlets for sharing the written word, it’s also the most information-rich generation of all time. Duh. Everyone knows this. But it makes writing so much more fun! I can, on […]
Living Up to My Privileges as a Parent
I *finally* shampooed my carpets this morning. It’s such a disgusting task. Not the actual scrubbing part. I’ve got a carpet shampooer. It’s fine. It’s the dumping part–when I pour the sucked-up cleaning water down the drain. Gross. It’s just almost sludge. While I like the illusion of cleaner carpets, I wonder how many, many […]
Lather, Rinse, Repeat. It’s what writers do.
So, this summer I’ve somehow managed, amidst the chaos of having five kids around, to do quite a bit of writing. It’s a Summer Vacation Miracle!* I was thinking about patterns the other day, of how I work on stuff. Like, say this summer I’ve been a writing maniac, four pages a day on average, […]
Editing. It’s like Jenga.
I have a big problem with my current project. It’s not exactly writer’s block. It’s more like … editor’s block. And continuing on with the “block” terminology, it’s kind of like dominoes. Or JENGA. Remember Jenga? That game where you try to carefully remove a block from the stack without toppling the whole pile? I remember […]
A Starting Point for Character Creation
The other day I received one of those emails that just makes me smile. It was a request for advice. Made me feel so awesome to be asked for advice. My young friend, who is very artistic by nature and is in college asked, “I have a project that involves developing characters and such. I wonder […]
Things I Paid my Daughter $1 to Do
Today my 10 year-old asked me if she could save up and buy a kiddie pool to put in the back yard. My mommy mercenary ears went a-buzzing! Cheap labor! A way out of doing housework chores I have been dreading! Yeah! “Sure, sweetheart. Do you want to start today?” “Do you mean ‘money jobs’?” […]
Name Some Children Some Names and See What Happens
It’s freezing out there. I went running in 14 degree weather this morning. And I couldn’t find my scarf. And when my neighbor pulled up to tell me to “go inside where it’s warm,” I couldn’t respond because I’d been out there too long and all I could say was, “Hawah? Mah wips don’ wahhk.” […]
The Lament of the Snacking Writer
What was with me that I thought I needed enough Ritz Crackers to choke a horse in order to churn out a few (I mean, ten, friends, ten!!!) pages on my WIP yesterday? I mean, sure. Snacking and writing go together like bread and butter (of which I ate inordinate amounts over the holidays.) Or […]
