Love is worth the risk
No work this week. By the time you read this we’ll be at the seashore. We often celebrate our anniversary at Cape May. This year it is 5-0. the big golden one. We’ll be gone all week. We’ll be walking, relaxing, and staring at the waves. But first, coffee!
One of the most satisfying things for a writer is typing The End on a rough draft. It isn’t the actual end of the process (layers of fixes, rewrites, comments from beta readers, editing, and formatting lie ahead), but it is the point at which the thing exists. I had a moment like that last […]
With apologies to Robert Burns, plans change. Sometimes life takes an unexpected turn—and so do the stories I write. The beginning and end of The Price of Glory have been clear to me, but the middle—as is often the case—has been murky. I woke up this past week with a harsh light shining on the […]
What do you think of when I say I’m “writing?” I suspect most people envision the creation of the first draft of a book, the putting of words on paper, er, or into a word processor, This week I’ve been putting down words, creating new prose, at a steady pace. So. Writing. In some ways […]
Why not cherry pie for breakfast? The holiday season is one long balancing act between hard work, extra effort, meditation, and celebration. I chose to start today with some leftover celebration. I couldn’t just leave it sitting all by its lonesome in that pie pan, could I? I’m running around on a gimpy foot so […]
Blog, verb, the act of updating a website on which one records news, opinion, thoughts, and insights. This relatively new English verb out lasted the short-lived noun weblog, on which it was based. It is now ubiquitous. I blog, he blogs, you blog, they…I wonder what a Latin conjugation would look like? Ahem. Sorry. I […]
Recently John Le Carré gave CBS’s Sixty Minutes five tips for novel writers. You can find them here. One was easy: “Keep a travel journal.” Some were lessons I learned the hard way: “Make the verb to the work,” and “Start your story as late as possible. One is giving me fits. “Start writing at […]
The Reluctant Wife is in the final stages of editing and on track for an April 26 release. It is set in 1835, and in the process of writing it I learned quite a bit about that era. Sometimes I think collecting odd bits of facts is the most fun part of my job. The […]
Well, the ending was worth staying up for even if did run absurdly, insanely long. Warren Beatty gave it to the wrong movie? Unbelievable, but not his fault. As always, the show was a mixed bag, but it had some good moments: The hidden figures actresses introducing the real Katherine Johnson Emma Stone’s dress The […]