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
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
Being invisible is pretty hard for a kid. Crummy childhoods take many forms; usually, it’s an amalgam of yuck. Smacks and screams thankfully have a time limit, but neglect is
Hint: It’s Books Stories of survival fill me with shivery delight. I rarely meet a story of man/woman vs. elements that won’t keep me up until all hours. Heartpounding adventure
First, they put Vaseline on the camera lens. Next up was rose-colored lighting, shooting through pantyhose and soft focus. And then, just in time for my first author photo in
Recently, a thread in an online writer’s community popped up, beginning with someone (who hadn’t begun querying) asking why folks sent query letters to so many agents. Did they have
I started Jesse, A Mother’s Story twice. The stark beauty of this memoir hit me the moment I began. Marianne Leone’s narrative, written with an unrelenting immediacy, yanked me into her
I love books; I love them more than bagels, jewelry, or cashmere sweaters, and that’s a lot. Reading kept me from teen pregnancy, heroin, and robbing convenience stores with a
Stories abound of Jewish people who grow up warm and secure in their faith. Those for whom the eight days of Hanukah didn’t compete with Christmas: Jewish nurses, firefighters, and
When I was newly married (19!), my then-husband and I moved to a farm between Binghamton and Ithaca, New York. His job was being a farmhand. Mine was reading, watching the
My sister and I didn’t grow up rife with traditions. On Halloween, we wore old shirts to represent that we were hobos or beatniks, depending on our mood. When we
I played with the first line, “Everyone hates a fat woman,” for a decade (and published four other novels) before writing Waisted. The scale-obsessed women screamed in my head, but I kept
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
For ten years, I co-led groups for violent men.* I sat in a circle with a (usually) male co-leader and anywhere from 8 to 18 men who’d been violent with
Woman (me, for instance) weeks (months?) getting ready for a book launch (or any event): Buy a new dress.Return dress.Decide to wear an edgy jagged-hem blouse.Realize anyone using the
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
My childhood clothes resembled the old Catskills joke about food: The food is terrible at this hotel—and the portions are way too small! My mother brought my sister and me to John’s
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
Perhaps the lure of the bad boy is similar to the temptation of climbing Mt. Everest. It feels so good to conquer it and reach the top—despite all the pain
The writer’s code (written into our secret writer club rules) reminds us that day jobs (and only day jobs) stand between us and a published novel. I believed. Thanks for
If you love every picture of yourself, or you’re one of those naturally photogenic people, you won’t need this post. And I don’t want to stand next to you in
“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”—Stephen King I’ve been on a tear, having just read three (entirely different) books so good that now I’m in book depression, waiting to find
Just How Useful is ChatGPT for Writing Fiction? Screaming headlines about using AI for writing (horror! useful? takeover???) appear in the newspapers,
Time is writing’s best friend Time to writeTime to let it mellowTime to readTime to rewrite Time to wait long enough to get your eyes Randy Susan Meyers