Wounds: we all get them. During the 1988 Jamboree encampment of 32,000 Boy Scouts, one troop (38 Scouts) led the entire Jamboree in cuts treated at the medical tent. The huge number of nicks from busy knives sounded negative until someone toured the camp and saw the unique artistic walking sticks each boy in that […]
Month: October 2018
Six Days Until NaNoWriMo–Time to Gear Up!
NaNoWriMo (the shortened name for National Novel Writing Month) begins November 1st. I wasn’t planning to join this year, but I realized this week that (for several reasons), I had lost momentum on my novel since coming home from England. So what better way to get back in the writing habit pronto than joining NaNoWriMo […]
Fight Back: The Importance of Reading and Writing Fiction
Not everyone understands why we love to read fiction. With a sniff and upturned nose, it has been called a “waste of time” by many. And when we first begin writing fiction, we may also have trouble justifying using precious free time “just to write stories.” Reading is more acceptable to some if you read […]
The Fun Side of Research: Local Color
Even though I had done months of reading and research before my stay in the Yorkshire village of Settle, I learned so much more by living there a month. How I loved all the small town events in the village: folk singing many nights in the pub, a weekly market day every Tuesday, the weekend […]
I’m Overwhelmed! Where Do I Start?
I got home from England late Sunday night after being gone a month. I don’t sleep on planes, plus I ended up delayed in London overnight because of fog. So by the time I got home, I was still operating on UK time and had had only ten hours sleep total in three nights. The […]
Borrowing Habits
Back in college, I had a friend who lamented, “If only I could run on my stomach!” She loved to run, never missed a day, and had thighs of steel. She also loved to eat, never missed a snack, and had a stomach like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. If only she could apply her running […]
Writing á la Pavlov
In previous weeks I’ve shared why I went AWOL for months, the need to rest, reflect and realign, how to re-figure your writing output, and how to avoid burnout in the first place. What if you’re ready to write again? You may not have hours every day to write, or you may have tight deadlines. […]