Recently I've been thinking about my author-life a lot. I have been able to do some really cool things since I've been published, and I'm so fortunate to have experiences with all types of writers. And each of those experiences have helped something crystalize for me ( Read more... )

• I'm working through the Dreaded Middle Part of my latest novel. Ugh. I hate this point: I've lost the excitement of starting something new, the end is not in sight, and this is where the self-doubt and doubt about the project take over ("this book stinks." "Why did I think this was a good idea?" "I should have been a dentist.") The good news? As ( Read more... )

 HOW has it been two weeks since I've updated?! Yikes.

I was planning to update my resolutions and goals, and write a "taking stock" type post, but I got some super-fun news yesterday that has railroaded just about everything else.

This summer, I'm spending a month in ITALY! Teaching!! YAY!!!


( Read more... )

 Tomorrow, I head back to work for the second semester. My syllabi are ready, I've pre-marked the pages in my books to correspond with the assigned reading, and I've put all paper due dates and meetings in my calendar ( Read more... )

 In one of my other lives, I'm a college English teacher and (former) director of academic support. One who never uses red pens to make corrections. Mostly, this is because I think red sends a strong "you are wrong, I am right," message. And while there are MANY cut and dried issues in writing--grammatical mistakes, odd sentence constructions, etc ( Read more... )

 Since I was deep in revision-land and since then I've been deep into family-world, I haven't had opportunity to post about my creative writing course. Here's what we've worked on lately:

Character

• Discussed the importance of the author knowing more about the character than is necessarily on the page
• all the ways to get across descriptive elements-- ( Read more... )

The semester is back in full swing, as am I.

1. Synopsis time! I'm putting together a synopsis for Book #2, ABA, for my agent to review this weekend. This will be a challenge because
    a) Book #2 isn't finished yet, 
    and b) I'm not sure how it will end.
It might actually be helpful to write the Summarized Mystery Ending, because it'll force me ( Read more... )