Lani Diane Rich has a great entry worth reading today over at Re-Inventing Fabulous. I’m a writer; no matter what other roles I play in life — and I play a lot — I am, and always have been, someone whose mind turns to how to frame a story. This means an active imagination, which is great when it’s throwing out plot lines, visualizing a scene, or...

“You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.” — Oprah Winfrey How’s NaNo going for the rest of you? I slept well after making my decision, and spent a good afternoon with my knitting and wallowing in the glorious schmaltz of the Judy Garland version of A Star is Born. The high point, naturally, is Garland’s...

I haven’t given up on this thing yet, though there have been enough things happening that I’ve seriously considered it. “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans,” John Lennon once sang, and it’s very true. Home life has changed a lot. I know we talk about discipline in our writing and the need to show up at the...

I keep running into folks who say, “You need to start with a sentence — preferably 25 words or less — that sums up your book.” Unless I’m going to write, “Boy meets girl, stuff happens, they live happily ever after,” I don’t think that’s going to work for me. The idea is brilliant; you boil your story down to its...