Dropping the Mice In: Ridding Ourselves of Critical Voices

Anne Lamott says that what often gets in the way of our writing is all the critical voices we hear each time our fingers touch the keyboards. What I’ve come to learn as a writer-person is that I first have to quiet my brain enough to even hear the voices. I’m not sure if the [...]

Are You Ready for Publication?

Not your manuscript. You. Here’s the test: Strip down to your pre-fall Garden of Eden nakedness and stand on the fifty-yard line during halftime at the Super Bowl while everyone submits critiques of your body on the JumboTron. If you can handle that without buckets of drugs and/or a lifetime of therapy, then you’re probably [...]

The Teacher Becomes The Student

It’s much easier to assign writing than to teach writing. That epiphany in my profession as a high school English teacher was a blessing and a curse. . .for me and for my students. It meant I stopped bombarding them with the alphabet soup of essays (analysis, biography, comparison, definition, exemplification, etc.), and started devoting [...]

To Halve and To Whole

As a writer, I sometimes live disconnected from the world my body actually inhabits. I watch peImage by Ravages via Flickrople,  notice their gestures, analyze how they perch on a chair, assess how they dress, listen to their conversations.  I’ve learned to dig into the belly of my purse for my notebook and write these [...]

You must remember this…or maybe not

 I found a link that may help when we’re writing to be more aware of the audience we’re targeting. My epiphany for the significance of frame of reference came one school year when I was discussing the assassination of President Kennedy. As a teacher, I know enough to realize when the eyes of everyone in [...]

The dream continues

PART TWO of When the dream’s big enough (Part One here) After I wore the first layer of skin off my pointer finger jabbing numbers on the cell phone to announce my new agent-ness, I allowed myself to just, well, soak in the absolute blessed luxury of the experience. The most amazing aspect of it [...]

When the dream’s big enough, the facts don’t matter

Several years ago, my husband bought me a laptop and, ever so romantically said, “Here, now go write something.” And, being the ever obedient wife, I did. Months later. I’d started reading Kristen Billerbeck‘s Ashley Stockingdale books because (are you ready for this?) I liked the covers. A voracious reader, I’d never picked up Christian [...]

GROWING GRAMMAR: Sites for soaring

Today I’m featuring a few sites of interest and invite you to explore them. I hope they provide information, entertainment, and justification for being on the internet.   Double-Tongued Dictionary: A site to behold! You can find new words, slang, and jargon. The “About” page bills the site as one that “records undocumented or under-documented words [...]

GROWING GRAMMAR: Where were you on National Grammar Day?

In case you neglected to mark this on your calendar, and since Hallmark has not yet officially designated it a greeting-card holiday, you may have missed: In the name of educational fun (and, no, that’s not an oxymoron), and to exercise your pointer finger, I’m providing the following links for your clicking: The Society for [...]

Reflexive Pronouns Should Not Be Involuntary Reactions

This is the what the sound of fingernails (think long, acrylic) scraping against a chalkboard would look like: hisself theirself/theirselves themself STEP AWAY FROM THESE WANNA-BE PRONOUNS! If you’re using them as dialogue for a character who speaks non-standard English, fine. Otherwise no, no, and no. The STANDARD reflexives are: myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, [...]

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