Straight talk from the sisters about blood, sweat and ink
I couldn’t sleep, so I stood outside last night on the deck and watched the stars and an occasional airplane glide through against the dark sky. Then I saw a shooting star. Oh, my. A shooting star. If I had blinked, I would have missed it. I captured it in my brain, full of wonder …
Continue reading “Finding Conflict in Fleeting Moments”
I’m postponing the next installment on my series, Fiction as Art, as we’ve embarked on a Halloween themed week. The Grim Reaper broke into my house on a frigid January night when I was five and stole the body and perhaps the soul of my four-year-old brother. I had no understanding of death at such …
Continue reading “Death: The Highest Stake for a Writer”
You know I’ve enrolled in a writing course at the Visual Arts Center in my neighborhood. I’d been looking for an art class but inadvertently stumbled on their writing program. The first meeting was good, the second, not so much, but the third? Well, awesome. We critiqued each other’s first drafts of a short story …
Continue reading “Do as You Like: A Lesson from Michaelangelo”
Emotional Writing One of our WOS sisters here just suffered the loss of her mother. I can’t imagine, although I know it’s coming. The woman who gave you life cannot and should not outlive yours. But it must be devastating. I once had a critique partner tell me to “go deeper.” That she could tell …
Continue reading “Emotional Writing – Going Deep”
We all make mistakes; it’s the downside of being human. I’ve made more than my share by moving too quickly, not proofreading, not thinking and, yes, just being stupid. I’ve been embarrassed, I’ve embarrassed others, and I’ve learned. And every particular mistake has only been made once. And, thankfully, none of those have made it …
Continue reading “Blunders and Boo-Boos”
I awoke the other morning at around eight and my pulse rate instantly spiked. No, I wasn’t having sex, nor had I just awakened from a night terror, I’d simply flicked on the Today Show. My pulse usually languishes for about an hour or so because I never seem to be able to drag my …
Continue reading “The Anti-Feminism Movement: Confusing the Issues”
Biographies have always fascinated me. I love to read and hear how others become successful, what motivates them, yadda yadda yadda. It’s the human interest part of me that wants to scoop this stuff up, not from People or OK Magazine, or, God forbid, the National Enquirer (not that there’s anything wrong with them), but …
Continue reading “Failure Is An Option”
“Ripped from today’s headlines.” Remember the expression? The TV show, “Law and Order”, right? I often think of that show when people who don’t write fiction ask me where I get my ideas for stories. Where don’t I get ideas? They beat me about the head until I capture the idea in a computer file …
Continue reading ““Ripped from Today’s Headline” or Where Do Writers Get Ideas”
If you’re like most of the writers I know, you’re not getting paid much to do what you do. You’re sitting up late at night or early in the morning. You’re writing between meetings and brainstorming quickly in the elevator on your iPhone while you rush off to make money until the day you can …
Continue reading “A Reason To Bleed”
About nine months ago, long before Lyn Shepherd bashed J.K. Rowling or Ruth Graham issued her condemnation of adults reading YA books, or the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter blasted fundraising milestones, I wrote a post where I advised writers: “…don’t dismiss children’s fiction. Children’s literature is often ripe with what scares society. The 1800s started a …
Continue reading “Kidlit Matters: What History Reveals”