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Yesterday I held a cooking party.  (I’ll get the final recipes up soon, I promise.)  People came over, drank, cooked, ate, talked, had fun.  Every one of these I do, they get better.  More fun.  It takes a lot of work, a lot of hidden prep to make these things go off.  An understanding of […]

So I’m getting better about writing fiction every morning.  I missed a couple of days last weekend, but I went to a funeral, so sue me, shoulder-angel.  But I’ve already cleared out the queue of stories that I had in mind, so I need to find something else to write.  Turns out when you set

Let’s stipulate that there are two types of lies that writers can use: the lie that comes from the heart, and the lie that comes from the head.  Neither is true.  Even when you’re telling a true story, it’s not true.  Your memory is wrong, and your emotions are wrong.  What you think and feel

Recap schmecap.  I didn’t take notes, I just went. Getting me to go to a new public event is a big deal.  I kind of feel bad for the people who got me to go: who invited me to speak.  Because I had to have been whining and digging in my heels, at least subconsciously.

So, the story I didn’t want to write hasn’t gone away yet, and it still feels like world-building for it is one of the hardest, slowest things I’ve had to do for a Very Long Time. So far: it’s an epic fantasy about the power of belief.  Wow, which sounds…completely the opposite of what I

The “look” challenge goes like this: take your current work in progress, find the first instance of the word “look,” and post its paragraph and the surrounding paragraphs as an excerpt. Then, of course, you’re supposed to tag five other authors, but I’ll leave that as optional.  My friend Liz Barone tagged me.  Sooo merciless. My

I was having this feeling the other day that a new idea for a project was coming toward me: I could see a pattern to the things I was seeking out. I have a stack of books checked out (some overdue, because I’m having a hard time letting go of them) that are about magic,

On the other side of finishing The Artist’s Way, here’s something else I can see: writers are down on themselves. A lot. I mean, I was.  And I can see it in a lot of other people.  But now I feel like skipping, I’m so not-down on myself.  Not flying, because I have stuff to

This is my last week of The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron.  Or maybe it’ll turn out to be the last week of my first time through.  I’m considering doing it again, because of the things that I didn’t really commit to, the first time through (in the weekly exercises). If you haven’t been following