thoughts on writing and life
It’s on my calendar…. I’m coming!
Thursday, October 26th
7:00 pm
Birmingham Unitarian Church
38651 Woodward Ave, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304
The books have all arrived. Whew! Wouldn’t it be scary to have a book party and no books? Am I stressing? Oh, please…it’s just a party. People I like will be there. There will be treats. There will be beverages. I get to talk. I like all that stuff, so I’m not stressing…much.
A Bird in the House
is a real book!
So let’s celebrate with a Party!
Everything has a time frame.
Details…
Here’s the thing…I wrote this lovely novel…YES, lovely. It’s just what I hoped it would be. I’m proud of it. It took three years. It says what I wanted to say. I’m not going to be humble about it.
But YIKES!!! Continue reading “Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda—Didn’t”
Today I spilled the beans…brewed beans…coffee. I knocked a whole cup over and stained the perfectly nice gray carpet in my study. I have a study to write in—I’m so lucky. Continue reading “Spilling the Beans”
It’s heavy duty pollen season. The allergist’s waiting room is jam packed with people: black people, brown people, and white people. We’re probably an assortment of Muslims, Jews, Baptists, Catholics, Atheists, Agnostics and Buddhists, etc…I can’t tell by looking.
There’s a woman wearing a purple and lavender patterned sari. When her name is called she stands, and a woman sitting nearby says, “Beautiful purple color.” Then a pale, frail elderly man says, “Yes, very beautiful.” The woman in the sari smiles.
There’s goodness here.
Thank you, Voters!
It was a close vote between #1 cover (blue) and #3 cover (yellow).
Some yellow cover voters said they wouldn’t consider reading the blue cover book…too scary, and made references to Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” Some blue cover voters said the yellow cover was too sappy, and looked like a book about fishing. They liked the blue cover because of the Detroit Zoo water tower on the back, and they liked it because it made them think of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” Continue reading “And the Winning Cover Is…”
Several months ago, when I sent my latest novel out to agents, I also started playing around with cover designs. Covering my bases—if I didn’t find an agent, at least my book would have a cover.
There’s no agent representing my new novel, so does that mean it will be trapped in my computer forever? Will all the hours my First Readers spent combing through those boxes of loose manuscript pages, checking commas and content, have been for naught? Hell, no. Continue reading “Springing Forward”
Elephants wallow to keep cool and keep bugs away.
Forgive me a moment, but I’m wallowing too. Not to keep cool. No bugs. I’m just feeling sorry for myself…or maybe I’m just bummed out. Continue reading “Wallowing”
It’s not a whale of a tail (or tale) I’m gonna tell you. I was just hoping for a little (or a lot) of professional help.
No. Not a psychiatrist. Continue reading “Help Wanted”
When my kids were little, we lived around the corner from the library in South Hadley Falls, Massachusetts. Every day when their father went to work on the afternoon shift at the Air Force base, the kids and I would walk to the library and gather several picture books that we brought home. They cuddled up close on either side of me on the front porch steps while I read to them. One day I read them The Story of Babar by Jean de Brunhoff.
When the mother elephant got shot, both of my little children cried and cried. I thought, oh no, I should never have read that book to them. After dinner they asked me to please read them the Babar book again.
“Any part in particular?”
“The part where the mother dies.” Continue reading “Dead Elephants”
First readers are an important part of my writing process. I’m not talking about preschoolers, or first graders, I’m talking about friends and family who read my novels before anyone else. Before it’s an actual printed book, when it’s still in process or finished (supposedly) with plenty of errors—typos, missed question marks, fuzzy wording, maybe even fuzzy characters or situations. After I’ve read the book at least a billion times it still needs to be read by kind volunteers. Continue reading “Fresh Eyes”
When I was a child, I said to my mother, “Tell me a story.”
When I became an adult, my mother said to me, “Tell me a story.”
She didn’t mean, tell me The Three Little Pigs story. She meant, catch me up on your life. What’s new? What’s going on? Share with me. Entertain me.
Continue reading “Tell me a story”