Shopping for Mother’s Day: difficult, expensive, typical (flowers! perfume! chocolates!) presents? Receiving presents? Yay!!! Stealing ideas? Smart. Below are some of the best (ethical, small business, useful, uber-pleasing) presents my family found for me. Gardening Overalls from Duluth Trading Co. Yes, I am in love with these. Pockets? Do you want pockets? Zipped pockets for … Read more
Unless one’s made of stone and iron, having written a novel based on extreme body-shaming & how the eyes of others scorch women must change one, yes? Pair that with compiling an anthology titled Women Under Scrutiny, and voila, the perfect storm for facing personal crucibles.* Though examining ‘knowing one’s character’s crucible**’ is paramount, delving into my personal albatrosses is … Read more
Unless it’s in service to a story, I avoid deep thought. But avoidance only stretches so far; when it became time to write a think piece on why I wrote that particular book (hiding inside a marriage, traumatic brain injuries, coma, emotional abuse, rageful words—stop me!), the murky connective tissues of linking why I write any novel, in particular, confronted … Read more
That perfect first line. How we chase it, scrambling phrases and our brains, seeking magic words to pop open our stories like magic keys. ( Sometimes, I want to create an entire book when a great beginning sentence pops into my head.) “There’s one thing I’m sure about. An opening line should invite the reader … Read more
At first, writing seems the perfect job for a control freak. * You are alone! At your desk. Making your very own world. * These characters you’ve dreamed up jump when you say jump. Okay, perhaps they squirm away from your outline a bit. Or they do that thing—musing about the time in high school when they almost … Read more