“This really isn’t a good time for a … song.”
Awfully cheerful for a Monday morning in our dystopia, but it’s what my Are You Listening playlist wanted me to hear.
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writing life
Ever after
I’m pulling on a thread of a story that could be resolved two different ways. Harsh or comforting. Hard truths or held punches. Grief or healing. Reflection or escape. Both paths can work. Both have power. My stories are often quite chatty, telling me what they want to be, what they’re meant to be. But
“I could never explain how a story could be worth more than a dance with a prince”
My short story “Heart’s Desire” is now online at Read Me A Story, Ink., a reading resource site for kids, parents, and teachers. Take a look–or a listen! “PERFUME SCENTED the air as my stepsisters left the house, trading names of princes they longed to dance with at the ball. My stepmother, Vivienne, crossed the room
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All Those Defiant Sparks
All my life, I’ve believed that no matter how dark this world gets, there’s light behind that darkness, light that always shines through in the end. This belief has been fundamental to my writing, to the sometimes-dark stories I tell and to all the stories I tell. Terrible things happen. But light—something within humanity that generates light—finds
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Decades Come and Decades Go
Or what I’ve been doing the past ten years Recently, when I told an extended family member I had work to do, he snapped back at me, “What work? When was the last time you wrote a book — ten years ago?” His response says more about him than me, of course. I’ve gotten “come on, you’re
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Doing the “you” things—honoring our (highly individual) writing processes
I’m a messy writer. I jump in, with little more than a character or an idea, a few sentences or a scrap of voice, and I just start writing. I don’t know where the story is going. I don’t know where it will end. Or maybe I think I know these things now, but I’ll
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Life isn’t a story. That’s probably a good thing.
Life isn’t a story. This is, for the most part, a good thing. Stories need conflict. Stories need drama. Stories need, more often than not, for the worst possible thing to happen at the worst possible time. No one wants to live in a well-written story. The pandemic isn’t a story. But if it were,
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Love and Perfection
“We love the things we love for what they are.” That’s from Robert Frost’s “Hyla Brook.” Variations on the line had been bouncing around in my head for a while before my husband and fellow writer, Larry Hammer, reminded me where it came from. I’d been thinking about Frost (without knowing it was Frost I was
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Happy writerversary to me
Oh, right. It’s 2020. Okay, you don’t need me to tell you that. What with the election and the pandemic and the wildfires and a thousand thousand other things, 2020 has seen to it that it won’t be forgotten anytime soon. But February 2020 was also, as this ten-year-old post just reminded me, my writingversary.
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Doing What You Love: Practical inspiration for writers
Doing What You Love: Practical Strategies for Living a Creative Life is now out in paperback! This chapbook draws on my quarter-century of writing experience to share insights and inspiration previously only available by attending one of my talks or, more recently, downloading an ebook. It makes a great gift for any writer in your
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