Posts tagged as:

writing

Are You Treating the Problem or the Symptoms?

June 3, 2010
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My Facebook friends know all about my recent computer woes. They started when my computer started acting funny. Applications kept crashing. Restarting took several minutes, not seconds – an eternity by Mac standards. My keyboard sporadically stopped working. At my wit’s end, I tried to wipe my hard drive and start afresh. (This was after [...]

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Coping with Curveballs

June 1, 2010
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“Life is what happens while you are making other plans.” Apparently, John Lennon was one of the many great minds credited with voicing this fact, which has been replaying in my mind for the past three weeks – minus the one week I spent at Folly Beach near Charleston, S.C.

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Refilling the Well

May 9, 2010
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Earlier this year, I was having a superproductive writing period. Writing most days, cranking out a high word count. Things were going well. Until they weren’t. Somehow I found myself more than 100,000 words in my novel, with no end in sight. What went wrong, and how could I fix it, short of scrapping my [...]

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Should I Wear a Cape?

May 4, 2010
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Much of the writing process seems to be about putting yourself in a writing state of mind. Several of the entries on this blog cover different ways I lure my writing self to the page: fountain pens, pretty journals, cupcakes, overpriced headphones. What about a writing uniform? I’ve bought NaNoWriMo gear to remind me of [...]

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One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

May 1, 2010
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Yesterday, after meeting a friend for breakfast, a creative lightning bolt struck me on Sixth Avenue. I was thinking about our conversation, and it triggered an exciting possibility for my novel. This one element could help me tie up several loose ends, propel the story forward and shrink the bloated piece down to a manageable [...]

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A Little Help from My Friends

April 26, 2010
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The writing life requires a certain amount of self-starting. After all, unless we’re writing for class or a client, who cares whether we finish writing that poem, novel, script, or whatever? Our friends and loved ones do. Because they care about us. And they know that our writing matters to us – even when we’re [...]

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Discipline Meets Creativity

April 23, 2010
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Writing is a creative process, a form of artistic expression. Granted, some endeavors are more so than others, but you get the picture. The whole creativity thing sometimes stymies my writing because I feel like brilliant words should flow from my pen in an inspired stream. They don’t. Just yesterday, in fact, I was telling [...]

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Literal (and Literary) Marathons

April 12, 2010
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I recently registered to run the 2010 New York City Marathon on November 7. My reasons for wanting to run the marathon are complex, and 2010 will be the year, despite the fact that I’ve been deferring my entry for longer than I care to admit. To help me with my training, I ordered two [...]

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Just Do It

April 8, 2010
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Some years ago, I picked up The Write-Brain Workbook. Most likely, I had forgotten to return a reply card to the Writer’s Digest Book Club, but I was happy with this purchase nonetheless. Bonnie Neubauer’s colorful workbook offers 366 short exercises “to liberate your writing.” Bold images combine with intriguing story starters to fire up [...]

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An Amazing Jolt

April 5, 2010
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Today was the day. Out of the blue, my husband re-entered our home, announcing that I had a package from Akashic books: advance copies of the anthology with my short fiction debut. It was an amazing feeling. In fact, I haven’t been able to focus since, and he brought the package in maybe three hours [...]

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