Appalachian Blessings
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Super, Ultra-Concentrated Prose
I'm entering a contest called The Frasier hosted by My Book Therapy. The entry includes a 500 word synopsis of my book along with the first scene. I think I mentioned before that writing a synopsis is harder than writing a novel. I was so proud to have gotten that...
A Break to Watch the Eagles
This has nothing to do with writing. It's just unutterably cool! There's an eagle's nest near Shepherdstown, WV, with a camera streaming live video. The mother has hatched one egg and the second should go any time. Miraculous! Check it out and have a happy Friday!
Pretending it's later than it is . . .
Have you recovered from the change to Daylight Savings Time yet? I haven't. Our puppy is skeptical about getting up an hour early as well--she's not fooled by those clocks! It kind of tickles me that as a society we're willing to jigger with the clocks and then...
Our Broken World
It was a discouraging weekend in the news. The earthquake in Japan. A bus crash in New York killed 14. Libya continues a descent into chaos. When the world seems to be going to pieces, it can sometimes leave me wondering why I bother to write at all. When the world is...
Speaking of distractions . . .
Here's my latest! We've adopted a puppy and I'm a little sidetracked. We had dogs when we got married almost 15 years ago and lost the last of three December 6, 2009 (see post here). It's been over a year now and we've taken the plunge again. Steadily losing our...
Getting Rid of Distractions
A friend recently wrote about author Jonathan Franzen and recommended his two latest books, The Corrections and Freedom. I haven't tried either yet, but I'm looking forward to reading them soon. They're literary fiction, which I read less of now than I used to....
How real are your characters?
I'd often heard authors talk about how real their characters become to them. Mine are pretty real, but it wasn't like I spent much time wondering what they were doing when I wasn't writing about them. I mean, really. And then I had lunch with a friend who'd recently...
Words, words, words!
On "Inside the Actor's Studio" host James Lipton always ends the show with 10 questions, one of which is, "What is your favorite word?" I think this was supposed to be a clever question, but for writers it's actually a great question. I think if you're a writer you...
Meet Sarah
