If you need a very quiet place to work, look up a friendly senior citizen living in a senior apartment complex who needs someone to look after the place for a few days. My father is still in transitional care, … Continue reading →
My elderly father is seriously ill. This time the call came on Sunday evening while my husband and I finished dinner. The buildup to the phone ringing developed piece by piece through two weeks of multiple doctor visits, tests, worry. … Continue reading →
So I spent a week in sick bay. Got some good fiction writing done between coughing attacks. Maybe traveling country roads with a fictional father and son was easier than dealing with a very real temperature and aching body. Maybe … Continue reading →
When is the time right for major change? My life as a writer is far less structured than any other role in my career. Lately I’ve been focusing on book activities and resurrecting a collection of short stories. There have … Continue reading →
A sad tale of technology gone wrong—a favorite story turned into a novella was stored on a flash drive about seven years ago. The flash drive has now disappeared and all that remains is the original short story as submitted … Continue reading →
So many things can be said about being American. People wear red, white and blue or paint a flag on their chest. There are bumper stickers about my land and your land. Tonight fireworks will make thousands of small children … Continue reading →
What’s your summertime writing behavior? Are you reading this during breaks at a writers’ workshop or sitting in a cottage? Do you take vacation days to barricade yourself at home with your laptop? Will your Fourth of July be spent … Continue reading →
One thing working in corporate America has going for it is that there are some boundaries around hours of work. You might do emails and text messages from early morning through the evening. You might make revisions on a big … Continue reading →
At a certain age many women won’t leave their home without a partial social mask called makeup. Maybe tinted moisturizer and lip shimmer. Maybe the whole deal with shadow and mascara and real lipstick. Even in the grocery store or … Continue reading →
How much is a creative writer worth? The facts are harsh. Writers are like job seekers paying a potential employer to review a job application. We’re a class of professionals who will work eighty hours in a month merely for … Continue reading →
