In case it’s not already abundantly obvious, letting go isn’t my strong suit. Case in point: this morning, while trying to figure out how best to get the news out about my upcoming paperback, I got sucked into same pretty gnarly marketing quicksand. Before long, I was flailing … [Read more...]

Plot is such a slippery little sucker. It should be simple enough – plot is just what a story is about, after all – but it never is. So today I’m going to briefly outline what I think are the two most common plot pitfalls, but – as always! – I encourage you to share your own … [Read more...]

I love talking about subject matter, because it’s a sneaky way of talking about writer’s block. As most of you already know, I'm making it a personal mission to dissolve the myth of writer’s block. This is partly due to the fact that to suggest a state of mind exists that … [Read more...]

Two years ago yesterday, one of my dearest friends died abruptly of an aneurism. A year or so prior to that, when my husband and I were creating a will, we’d asked her and her husband to serve as guardians to our children in the case of our own untimely deaths. Rajna was beloved … [Read more...]

One thing I wished we talked about as writers is the historically unprecedented opportunity we now have to endlessly edit our work. Given that writers tend to be a sensitive, reactive, thoughtful, and ever-so-slightly insecure group of worker bees, it's really a surprise that no … [Read more...]

Last week’s post on revision reminded me, again, of how infrequently we talk about how we work with our work in the writing community. Scratch that. How often do any of us discuss any kind daily grind with anything approaching the integrity it deserves? We are rarely ever at a … [Read more...]

I think it’s safe to say that a writer can’t get very far without developing some kind of relationship to revision. Unfortunately, this relationship is often fraught at best, dysfunctional at worst. I’m pretty sure I was writing daily for more than a decade before I could return … [Read more...]

I was listening to a podcast yesterday on the evolution of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” a song I think is about ten years away from being voted America’s favorite folk song, but which lingered in relative obscurity for almost fifteen years until a series of random events … [Read more...]

It’s no secret that all dedicated writers must first be dedicated readers. And while I’m a believer in Malcolm Gladwell’s idea that one must put 10,000 hours into something before any level of expertise can be achieved, I think that writers actually have to put as many hours into … [Read more...]

Another year has begun, and all around us resolutions and new beginnings are falling like so much fresh snow over everything that is tired and slow to bloom. I love this idea of starting over, the way that resolution is so much like revolution, a way to kick time and … [Read more...]