Imagine a dark and blustery night, a room cast with shadows. A writer polishes her working manuscript. The publisher has asked to see what she has so far. (Plot Twist). She adds fancy words, changes the formatting, calls on the universe for extra powerful positive thinking. The wind blows like a demon out her office…
I got the completely wrong college degrees. I’ve never been bothered by this. At least I have some college degrees. And their wrongness is an accurate reflection of my nature (blooming ev-en-tu-al-ly). I didn’t know and/or embrace what I wanted out of life early on. Who cares, because I got what I wanted in the…
Friday night, I took the chickens to the local brewpub for dinner. As is common to the genre “casual American restaurant”, the BBC boasts televisions perched above diners like rocks on a cliff, threatening to fall on your head or at least your nachos. We have a TV at home, but it sits in the…
I recently bumped into the professional photographer who took my glamour shot—the headshot I’ve used for magazine bios and my website for the last few years. The photo is only four-and-a-half years old, but friends have been complaining that it doesn’t look like me anymore. (Aside: Chicken Noodle is also four-and-a-half years old. A coincidence…
The Universe must have heard my siren call to the aging process, my little shout-out to 39, because last weekend was one of those rare times when the stars aligned and every single thing that happened made me want throw my arms in the air and sing like Julie Andrews. Here’s how the hard facts…
This Sunday is my 39th birthday. 40 has been looming large this year: A Hindenburg blocking the sun, inflated by the hot air of my 20th high school reunion, Facebook, an offer of anti-aging products from my dermatologist and the realization there is little chance I’ll publish a book by the Big 4-0. If 40…
Chicken Little is potty training. This means that I’ve been carrying pants and panties in size 2T in my purse everywhere I go, scanning new environments for bathrooms as a claustrophobe would scan for exits, and muttering “do you need to go potty?” in two minute intervals like a paranoid schizophrenic with bad childhood memories.…
During her keynote at the Hawaii Writer’s Conference, Kristin Hannah said that before she could commit to the life of a writer she had to decide that it would be okay to fail. Like so many first-time novelists, Hannah wrote a manuscript and sent it off to agents, certain that it would be on the…
My plan was to try to think of some thoughtful topic to tie to this photo, some interesting tidbit about marketing and writing to share with you all. Perhaps I could write about how at the Hawaii Writer’s Conference we were informed that the title of your project alone could sell it or sink it.…
I read a discussion online recently about how before signing a client, an agent will read his or her author blog. Naturally. For a writer, one major reason to blog is to create a body of work online for anyone to peruse, especially, should you be so lucky, a publishing professional. The point of the…