I’ve always been somewhere in the middle of the plotter-to-pantser spectrum, but no more. At least not for now. I’ve done a deep, painful, belly-smacking dive into the pool of plotting and I’m pretty sure that’s where I’ll stay. It hurt. There were tears. Notebooks were damaged in this endeavor. But I think I’ve come […]
Two years ago, I was poking around in an antique shop in Lenoir, North Carolina, a little furniture factory town in the mountains on the western side of the state, and I came across this book of postcards. Flipping through the soft, faded images, I felt like the universe was whispering to me. As I […]
I’ve been doing a bunch of reading about magic – not the fantasy kind, the stage performance kind – and have concluded we can learn from magicians. As writers, we pull our readers into a world of our shared invention. We can’t make a good story without someone to read it, to react to the […]
I’ve lost my head for perfume. When I’m writing, I can’t give up reading altogether, as some stronger-willed writers do. Instead, I gravitate to topics unlike whatever I’m writing. Instead of dutifully whittling down the pile on my nightstand, I add to it. This is a trait I apparently share with many fellow writers. I […]
I’m in the middle of the madness right now, trying to connect the beginning with the end. It’s the part that makes me want to give up, throw it all into the recycling bin, and start on the next idea. And that next idea always seems so tantalizingly easy when you’re in the messy middle, […]
I still have her voicemail message on my phone. Excited, cheerful, amazing. When I listened to it for the first time, a little part of me couldn’t believe it and a really big part of me wanted to jump out of my car and do a happy dance in the parking garage! Someone read my […]
Yes, a lot of these submissions were sent back when snail mail was king and the SASE was queen, bearing tidings of far-off lands. And by “tidings,” I mean “rejections.” About 3 years ago, I dug all these letters out of my file cabinet, organized them with a copy of the manuscript they accompanied (and […]
My children have two rabbits. Two rabbits became six (because that’s how rabbits roll). That’s right, this week, four teeny little bunnies arrived. My daughter is in love with her baby bunnies, delighting over their size, their colors, their little shut eyes and pressed-back ears. They are adorable. I asked her what they felt like […]
I’ve wanted to be a writer for a long time. It probably started when my best friend and I were going to make a book together. She was the writer, I was going to do the illustrations. But the words, the story, the characters, that was always what I loved. I spent quite a bit […]