I’m in a bathroom in a small town in Mexico. It’s the same as at home…but different. You can’t drink the water, toilet paper is not a given, and you check the water before you put soap on your hands because functioning faucets are not a given either….but the people are helpful, the scenery is […]
It’s the first weekend that feels nearly fall-like here, in North Carolina, and I have that urge to make lists, clean the closets, and reflect on summer. As I was combing through some photos from the summer, I thought about whimsy, and how important it is for my creative soul. Summer started with birds. My […]
If I say “social medial” and you think “I have nothing to say,” your paradigm is about to be totally up-ended. I had the pleasure of hearing President and Founder of The Social institute Laura Tierney’s thoughts this week (she’s on twitter @soLaur) and I’m going to share what I gleaned from her energetic, polished, […]
I’ve been thinking about time, lately, and the opening scene of I Don’t Know How She Does It (Allison Pearson) comes to mind. The main character, a working mother, is madly “distressing” a store-bought pie at 10 PM after work in an effort to make it look more homemade before she takes it to her […]
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 […]