Writing is hard work, especially when you must squeeze it in alongside the daily commitments of employment, relationships, domestic engineering, childrearing and pet wrangling. Sometimes the only way to get anything done is to abandon these commitments altogether! If...
Feel free to stay awhile and explore! I am so grateful for the genius, artistry, and patience of my designer, Madeira James, along with her team at xuni.com. This is the fourth iteration of my website in our 11 years of working together, and recently I confessed to...
Even if you're healthy and safe at home, you may be losing your mind right about now. I've put together a list of things (in no particular order) that might brighten your mood during this surreal quarantine from the rest of humanity. -- First of all, complete your...
I'm always looking for ways to silence the critic in my head--that meanie who loves to tell me "Girl, you SUCK." (Does it talk to you, too?) I also love experimenting with different approaches to the writing process. The books in my featured image--The Artist's Way...
I have long wrestled with journal lust. I even wrote a blog post about it in 2014. Last year I decided to get serious about this problem and committed to buying fewer journals and writing more in the ones I have. In fact, I set the goal of journaling every single day....
The 2018 Spring conference for SCBWI Oklahoma, "Striking at the Reader's Heart," will be held on April 6-7 at the OKC Embassy Suites on S. Meridian. If you write/illustrate for children and young adults, I highly recommend you check it out. You’ll certainly gain...
Welcome to my new Wordpress blog! My Blogger blog is now an archive, but you will find all my old posts dating back to 2010 here as well as there. As a reader, I find Wordpress blog posts so much easier to read and comment upon -- I hope you enjoy this new interface....
I am so excited to be a part of the Paper Hearts blog tour! And it's not only because Beth Revis is a friend and a wonderful human. She's also a NYT best selling author and a font of information about the business of publishing. A few months ago I read Beth's first...
Recently I participated in my first Twitter chat! One of the questions I barely had time to answer properly was "Any tips for setting in a historical novel?" (Thanks, Abigail!)Well, I love to talk about setting, because all my stories start with place. As soon as I...
A couple of days ago I returned from a seven night Kindling Words West retreat in Marble Falls, TX. The Retreat at Balcones Springs offered cozy cabins and beautiful scenery, and our workshop leaders Nancy Werlin and Karen Romano Young provided guidance on how to find...
A couple of things to share today, and though it may seem like a stretch, they actually are related. Favorite thing #1. More than thirty years after first seeing it, I re-watched Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966), starring the late David Hemmings. I first saw...
So last year I set some goals for myself, and I thought it might be fun to check on my progress.1. Journal/blog more. I'm pretty sure I wrote in my paper journal more than I did in 2013, but a counting of blog posts reveals that I wrote fewer. However, when you take...
I have a problem.Here's the scenario: over the summer, during one of my many visits to Blackwell's in Oxford, I somehow failed to avert my gaze when walking past the journals. Instead of getting the heck out of there, I headed straight for the rotating display and...
At school and library visits, I almost always get questions about how to be a better writer. I don't consider myself an expert, but I do love talking about this sort of thing. Needless to say, I got pretty excited when I saw this video in which excerpts from a Neil...
Last week I experienced Kindling Words West in Breckenridge, CO. As you can see, our surroundings were sublime. Our first evening together, all the attendees stated their intentions for the retreat. The mornings that followed began with yoga (optional), a fortifying...
