Tag: Essays

  • Walking In This World – Promptly

    The 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of the month are the Prompt Group meetings for the Evanston Writers Workshop.  It\’s funny, but I find that on prompt days, I don\’t usually do my morning pages in the morning.  Today is no exception; I wrote this morning instead of doing the pages (by that, I mean I worked on a WIP and not my journal).  I think that says less about the pages or Prompt Group than it does about me and my feelings around having lots or too much to do, but there you go.

    What do you do on your lunch break?  Do you take a break at lunch?  I learned many years ago that for my own sanity, I have to have a break in the middle of the day.  Today I took care of some housekeeping tasks and then went outside to knit for a half hour.  Having to deal with the odd man babbling loudly on the sidewalk, while annoying, kept me in the moment.  What was he doing?  Why was he babbling?  Did he know I sat on the park bench above him?  Did he know the stairs led around a switchback and he\’d be practically in my lap?  Was I safe?  Was I being judgmental?

    I find those kinds of monkey-mind questions happen more on days when I skip my morning pages than on days I do them.  That\’s not to say I float through my morning page days all serene, like a yogi; I\’m just more aware of them when I don\’t put them on the page.  It\’s as though my thoughts, expecting to have been put down on paper, are waiting for the attention I normally give to them.  Meanwhile, I knit.  I got a row done on a shawl I\’m designing. 

    There\’s some kind of universal lesson there, I think.

  • I\’m Blogging at Samhain Publishing and the Writer\’s Retreat Today

    I have two articles for you today.  The first is at Samhain Publishing, Who To Write About (When You Can’t Write About Your Friends and Family).  Rachel and I use pictures to inspire us in our stories, and I share some of what works for us.

    The second is Why Big Goals Don’t Work – Baby Step Your Way To Success.  I\’m forever hearing from people who want to make some gigantic goal their sole purpose in life (lose a hundred pounds, write a book, etc.).  I\’ve been told \”I\’ll just do P-90X,\” \”I\’m not in this to play, I\’m in this for a New York contract,\” \”Little goals are a waste of my time,\” etc.  Those people, the ones who said those things to me, aren\’t around doing their work anymore.  P-90X was designed by a triathlete who found to his shock that yoga challenged him.  But the part about him already being a triathlete meant that he understood how to accomplish things.  The one who told me they wanted the New York contract isn\’t even writing anymore.  See how dangerous such large goals can be, when they\’re not tempered by small, achievable steps?

    I hope you\’re having an enjoyable and productive Wednesday.  Remember, today is in your hands.  What do you want to do with it?

  • My Tue Cents for Twosday

    I think it\’s easy to get sidetracked.  I talk to authors who complain, \”I don\’t have time to write.\”  While I don\’t think they\’re lying, I do think they\’re not speaking completely honestly – to themselves, at least – about what their time is like.

    When we settle down and are honest with ourselves, the reasons for not writing aren\’t, usually, about time.  They\’re about fear, or block, or the inner critic saying that we have nothing worth writing.  But they\’re not about not having any minutes in the day to set fingers to keyboard or pen to paper.

    So today, ask yourself this:  What would it take for me to get onto the page today?

  • Collaboration

    Romance Divas is back up and running and, from the looks of it, going full steam ahead.  I\’m very excited, since I\’ve been a member there for several years now, and it\’s a terrific resource for writers.

    I\’m very excited to report they hosted an article of mine, \”Collaboration.\”  I hope you\’ll stop by and, if you\’re so inclined, leave a comment.

    Write on!-

  • Release Day Festivities

    As part of the Release Day festivities, I have two posts today that I\’d like to share with you.

    The first, Music, Art, and Writing – How The Three Support Each Other, is at the Torquere Press blog today. Please stop by and take a look and, if you\’re so inclined, leave a comment. (I respond to all comments.)

    The second, A Journal of Two Writers – Thoughts From the Other Side of Edits, is at the Torquere Live Journal.  Rachel and I share our thoughts on the editing process now that we\’ve gone through it.

    Enjoy!

  • Writing Conferences and Business Cards

    I am so excited to report that I am three places this week, but two came as a total surprise to me!  I\’m exceedingly grateful to the fantastic bestselling author Delilah Devlin for extending us space on her blog.  I wrote some tips for getting the most out of writing conferences.

    As a part of that exposure, Louise Rose-Innes of Marketing For Romance Writers asked us if she could cross-post our article!  Wow.  What a week, huh?

    Thank you to Delilah and Louise for the exposure.  I hope you\’ll stop by their blogs and let them know what you think; both have a lot of great content that I think you\’ll like.

    Our post on Delilah\’s blog is here, and Marketing For Romance Writers is here.

    Since it\’s May (already??), my Writer Wednesday post is up at the Writer\’s Retreat Blog.  I got asked a question about whether or not we should get business cards, and it got me thinking.  My thoughts resulted in an article (see why questions are so important?), here.

  • Earth Day: The Beauty of Everyday

    We are surrounded by beauty. Sometimes, we are surrounded by beautiful things without even knowing it.

    The image I give to you today in honor of Earth Day celebrates the ephemeral and eternal. Taken by photographer Michael Clothier, it is a study in texture and contrast:

    The model is photographed with bath tissue in order to develop the skill, as a photographer, of conveying texture within a black-and-white image where the paper is white and everything else in the image is darker. How do you get the paper’s texture to appear without losing the exposure of the rest of the image?

    Earth Day is like that. How do we look around us at the natural world and realize that we are living on the only planet we have? The polar bears drowning in the Arctic cannot call on the telephone, or email, yet their plight is as urgent as any text message – more so, because if we continue to turn a blind eye to their fate we will soon follow them to oblivion.

    It’s easy to succumb to a numb sort of despair or statis when faced with these kinds of problems. To my way of thinking, beauty is the same way: we know a beautiful painting or photograph, but we are, many times, blind to the everyday beauty around us. The image above appeals to me because of its contrasts: a lovely woman, pedestrian tissue paper, a sense of serenity, and the knowledge of the transitory nature of life in the form of throwaway paper.

    As you go through your week, I invite you to remember you are part of a great circle, and not only the circle formed by this blog hop. It’s important to remember the role we play in that circle, but it is ALSO important to remember that to take solace, to read and laugh, make love and dinner, all of these things are just as necessary to life as is toilet tissue in the right context.

    Happy Earth Day.

  • The Daily Round: Renewal

    Everyone is busy, these days.  \”How are you?\”  \”Oh, my Gosh!  I\’m so busy.  I have…\”  The litany seems endless.  Work, kids, money troubles, the economy, politics and voting, reading, writing, blogging, promo…  We certainly do not lack for things with which to fill up our days.

    Is this sustainable?

    Many religious traditions maintain that there is a day of rest once a week, where even the Creator took it easy.  What a slacker!  Or, maybe, what a smart thing to do…  Renewal is an underrated task, after all.  We don\’t \”feel\” as productive when we focus on it, we prefer to skip lunch and stay late, working around the clock and burning the midnight oil.  That, after all, is what gets the job done.

    But what if, this year, we try something different?  What if, once a week, we stop?  Turn off all the geegaws of modern technology, banish the television (or at least commercials – the mute button is a thing of beauty, as is the DVR), and really rest.  Just one day a week.  What might happen then?

    Try it, and find out.  After all, what do we have to lose?  Our stress?

    What\’s so good about all that stress, anyway?

  • This Week In Promo

    Here\’s a quick update on what I\’ve been up to, blog-wise, this week:

    Nine Naughty Novelists invited Rachel and I to guest post this week, and I wrote about promotion and how to get started without becoming overwhelmed.

    Today I was over at Silken Sheets and Seduction for my regular bimonthly post (I post on the first and third Saturdays there). Since it\’s my husband\’s birthday this week, and we\’re going away for this weekend once he gets up and around, I decided to share some of my thoughts about mini-vacation planning. It\’s my opinion that mini-vacations are necessary parts of serenity, and don\’t necessarily need to cost money. It\’s all in how we think about it. \”5 Tips for Planning a Mini-Vacation.\”

    Enjoy!

  • Several Recent Articles

    Happy Bredesmas!  As we pause to take stock as February winds on and January just goes \”poof,\” I realize that I haven\’t shared my recent articles with you.  Shame on me!  I figured I\’d make up for it by listing all of them in one post, rather than an individual post for each one.

    In January, the theme for the Beyond the Veil blog was \”Inside Publishing.\”  While I don\’t really feel like I could be characterized as being \”inside\” publishing, I share my views in \”Aunt Noony\’s Inside Look at Publishing.\”

    For the Silken Sheets and Seduction blog, I wrote \”Happy Bredesmas.\” I share a little about what the holiday means to me and talk about one of my favorite crafts, candlemaking.

    Bestselling author Delilah Devlin was kind enough to host Rachel and I again as guest bloggers, for which we wrote \”Be Like a Groundhog; or \’What To Do After the Resolution.\’”

    I had two articles on my publisher\’s blog, one as a guest for another author who couldn\’t make their regular post.  In it, I talk about how I organize my novels despite not using a formal outlining process.  \”Hate Outlines? Timeline!\” Then, today, I share \”Squeezing It In:  5 Tips for the Overstressed Neterati.\”

    Enjoy!

  • Life After NaNo

    Please join me today as I discuss life after the National Novel Writing Month, today at the Writer\’s Retreat Blog.

  • Staying the Course

    Today being Sunday has got me in a pensive mood. I think, as writers, we tend to think a lot about method: what is our method, what is the method of writers we admire or want to emulate, and what should our method be in order to be better – better authors, better sellers, better writers, better people.

    At the end of the day, though, none of that matters. If the story we have to tell gets told, then we\’ve done well. Getting to the page, or to the keyboard, is the important victory. We may cry and gnash our teeth on the way there, but if we get there, then we\’ve won.

    Writing can be a release from stress and it can be a stressor. It is, always, the truth of itself: it is nothing less than what we see, day in and day out, moment by moment. We may write what we see in literal terms, or we may write what we see on the screen of our minds. If we\’re lucky, others will find solace in what stories we tell. But tell them, we must: our job description is \”storyteller,\” after all.

    Someone remarked to me recently that they weren\’t certain that all stories deserve to be told. I disagree. I think there is room in the Great Conversation for the inane and the mundane. I think it is true that not all stories deserve an audience, nor should all stories want one. Sometimes the painful truth is that we may, ourselves, believe that our story should have one, but the reality is there isn\’t one. Does that mean we shouldn\’t write it? That we should muzzle ourselves in favor of the peace of the world? Not bother the silence with our noise?

    No. If we have a story, and we each of us do, then we should tell it. We should struggle with the pen or the keyboard and wrestle that minotaur. Worrying about where to send it when we\’re done is not the job of the storyteller. That is a job for later, when we put on the hat of author and learn the business of publishing. But many good stories are told, every day, by people to whom publishing is anathema. And many other stories aren\’t told that should be, that fester in silence because the writer forgot the one and most important rule:

    If you See it, Write it.

    Story is God.