Sometimes, rarely, I enter competitions. I’ve won two: a state of the art camera for a wildlife poster I designed, and the other a novel for randomly throwing my name into a hat. The camera got stolen, but I still have the novel–Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil, which I haven’t read yet. You may remember that …
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Category: Archive
Secret benefits of NaNoWriMo
Last week I said I’d write about NaNoWriMo, that whirlwind of writing activity centered around churning out a novel in 30 days. A year ago I actually pulled it off without registering, as I wanted to see if such a thing could be done, if I could do such a thing. At the end of …
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*Non-Movie Star Ennui: The Lonely Life of the Writer
I’m suffering from a serious case of ennui, which is the French word for boredom and the result of having retired from my “real job” about seven years ago. It should make me feel better knowing the French have given it such an elegant name, but it doesn’t. Honestly, I awoke the other morning and …
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The Unreliable Narrator
If we look up the meaning of the word AUTHOR, we discover that one of its definitions is GOD. That’s audacious at best. But what does it mean? It means we get to create a world entirely of our own making. We get to decide what it looks like, who and what populates it, and best of all, …
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Writing Disorders and What to Do About Them
Let me start by saying this is not a rant. No, it’s rather an earnest endeavor to help us all get to grips with our insanity. In some of us it’s stark and raving, in others it’s a mild form of disorientation. Both can be managed, if not cured. I should add that the …
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Drown or swim in a saturated book market
We spend months, years, writing a book of dazzling brilliance. We might be the only ones who think so, but hey, it was so hard, such a long process, such a fun process, such a tortured, frenetic, creative, maddening, exhilarating process, that only something splendid could emerge. You know, like a baby, who every mother …
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The Stink of Blue Jasmine: Writing the Protagonist
2013 has turned out to be a really bad year for me, physically that is. First, I broke my left ankle and then a few months later broke the right. Perhaps a little investigation into bone density is in order? The first one wasn’t so bad because after six weeks of no-weight bearing I could …
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Those who can’t do, teach: the cliche that misses the point
All cliches have a kernel of accuracy; they are like stereotypes, and can be just as damaging or disparaging. A dancer who’s too old for the stage; a writer who must supplement her income while she continues to chase publication. The belief, those who can’t do, teach, rests on the premise that an artist who is …
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Harry Potter wears Fifty Shades of Grey
Why do we write? Seriously, what madness drives us to spend months working long, anguished hours away from society, to timidly emerge with something we desperately hope millions of people will want to share? It doesn’t stop there, mind you. We then take a deep breath, don our armor (completely useless and ineffective) and face …
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It’s Rough Out There!
Stories need to be shared. I came to storytelling late in life. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve always been a storyteller. Not in a bad way, I’m not a particularly good liar, but I liked to make up stories to my children at bedtime rather than read to them. I was always popular at …
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