Category: *Writer’s Life

In Favor Of Writing Groups

I’ve tried to keep an open mind about how writers write ever since I met a guy who swore he only ever wrote anything good while he was naked, but last weekend when I was in Barnes and Noble writing and I heard two women my age talking about how stupid they think writers’ groups …
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Common Writer Advice Revised

We all get tips from well-meaning people who truly believe the wisdom they’re imparting. The most common writer advice I hear is this: You don’t need a detailed outline. Don’t revise mid-draft; just write. It’s okay if your first draft sucks. This advice works for a lot of people, but if this isn’t your process …
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Happily Ever After? I Hope So!

By the time you read this, I’ll be planted on the sandy white beaches of Montauk Point. If you’ve never been to Long Island, New York, you’ve missed out on one of the most spectacular stretches of oceanfront in the world. Yes, that’s what I said…the world. I’ve been on many a vacation where people …
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Puzzles & Writing

My kids learned just about everything from their ABC’s to their rhyming words from scavenger hunts. I wrote about some of my unconventional educational methods a few weeks ago. You can read more about that here. Our summers have always included puzzles, and vacations filled with gold panning, adventures and planting geocaching clues. We love …
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Keeping Your Mojo

Tomorrow I have the honor of reviewing a new series I read over the weekend. Six books in one weekend. God Bless Amazon and the Kindle Reader. I’d finish one, et voila! Presto-chango, here’s the next one! I fell asleep about halfway through the sixth one last night and, because I can’t stand to have …
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Writing With Kids

I have a beautiful writing room, it has a wall filled with books and a desk that overlooks the pond in our backyard, but today I’m working on my writing from the couch. Next to me a three-year-old has snuggled into my elbow space and is eating crackers and stealing sips of my Chai tea. …
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Five Tips From The Oxford Inklings

I’ve known about The Oxford Inklings for most of my lifetime. However, I didn’t become interested in them again until quite recently. For those of you who don’t know the story, The Inklings were an informal literary society and critique group that started meeting in Oxford during the 1930s. However, they weren’t just any group, …
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Your Business Card: Valuable Real Estate

We all have them. Business cards, that is. Writers probably spent a combined time, across all of our efforts creating them, that would have equaled the time to pen an epic tome. You know what I mean. Which layout design? What picture? Font style and size? Oh, and the info to include in those few …
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Play Your Hunches

It’s the one lesson I remember from my father, who died when I was young: play your hunches. Three years ago I went to a writing workshop in San Francisco. I had just been forcibly retired and thought I might look into another profession – one that didn’t involve Boards of Directors, staff, agendas, emails …
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