News & Updates

I don’t even know where to begin. The last time I posted to this blog was June. JUNE! It’s easy to beat myself up for it, because according to every writing rule I’ve read, I should be doing a bunch of stuff to further my writing career. Blogging, Twittering, Facebooking, e-mail lists, etc. That’s all…

It’s June 1st. I’m supposed to start rewriting, today. I gave myself a couple of weeks to read through my draft and make notes and edits and sit with the work, convinced that I’d have a clear map and a new understanding of where this book was going. I’ve had moments and flashes of terrific…

Chris Cornell died yesterday and it’s had me all kinds of thinking. It’s rare that I am ambivalent about an artists death. Especially an artist like Chris Cornell, who helped define a whole generation of music. I think about all the creative work he had yet to do, and what his music meant to me….

Writing a book is an emotional experience, at least it has been for me. Of course, I’m writing a memoir, so maybe my experience is different than other writers writing different things. I’m pretty sure we all share one thing in common, though, and that is the lonely road. The road we walk as we…

How to Avoid Your Book (or…how to deal with paralyzing fear and get your writing done anyways) All right, so I’ve felt a little stalled this week. The book is coming along, but the writing is slow. I’ve done everything else instead: I’ve talked about my book shared part of it with two friends researched…

I’m always super-curious about how other writers actually write, and how their brains work. While I was struggling to get started with my book, it’s how I distracted myself – looking up writers’ habits and tips. Unlike my many other forms of random time-wasting, seeking out this information actually inspired me. It helped me get…

I dream and fantasize about long chunks of time in which to write. In my minds’ eye, I have a writing cabin in the mountains, surrounded by trees and wildlife and solitude. There’s a river nearby, full of fish. I like it there, that fantasy place. I think it might be in Alaska. The reality…

I am an unpublished writer, writing my first book. I just hit 80k words on a solid second draft. I’m almost done, and then on to the editing/rewriting. I think it’s one of the toughest things, being in this limbo state. I don’t know what the future holds for this book, but I am excited…

Oh my gosh, the first draft of my book was ugly. It was an awful mess, with me just blathering on incoherently. They say that the first draft of your book is you telling yourself the story, which is true for me, for sure. Since I’m writing a memoir, I had to unscrew the timeline…