A few weeks ago, I wrote about emotion versus knowledge in storytelling, noting that writers can look up any facts they need. But how do you get the facts besides using Google? Personal Experience: If what you’re writing is based on your lived experience, including setting and secondary characters, you won’t have much research to…
In all honesty, there are more than three things that could make this list, but because it’s the end of the month and Memorial Day to boot (and you’ve got fun pre-summer things to do!), I’ll stick to three. 1. Just because J.K. Rowling was able to get her 79,000-word first middle-grade manuscript published, doesn’t…
I think ideas are as amazing as dreams. Trying to figure out where your dreams came from, or why you’ve dreamed about an ex-boyfriend who is suddenly a French poodle flying from South Africa to Mendocino, is kind of fascinating. Ideas are just as fascinating, and if you’re a writer, you get to connect the…
I have a friend who asked how I can write stories about foster children when I haven’t been one. A fair question. The answer I gave her was empathy and having gone through a training program, and then spending time with them. Does that make me an expert? Far from it. But, in fact, I…
Children are fascinating and can be resourceful and capable if we let them. They can also be underestimated and overprotected. Frankly, in the great big world with all its perceived bogeymen and dangers, overprotection is often a caregivers’ knee-jerk reaction. Have you ever watched kids though, as if they were exhibits? If you’re going to…
You say you don’t know what to write or even if you have anything worth saying. Everyone else seems to know, but not you. I say, you do know what to write and you do have something worth saying. Try this. Is there a song that you will listen to just to get to that…
How many of you are suffering from a (jelly bean) hangover? This year, for once, I’m not. Somehow, somewhere I found a pot of willpower. Yay to anyone else who also found their pot of willpower. Remember how this feels. In addition to advancing my goal of eating less sugar, I also finished a major…
There is so much hope in children’s books. They should be prescribed by doctors and therapists. (Don’t send hateful comments because mental illness cannot be cured by a children’s book.) I’m not saying mental illness can be cured by children’s books. But for anyone who is looking at the world and seeing only darkness… For…
I love picture books. I don’t care that my kids are well beyond the picture-book stage (except at Christmas). I admit to reading picture books to my daughter’s dog, Walter, after I take him for a walk. It relaxes him. I asked my son the other day what picture books he remembered from his childhood….
What do you do all day? I’m retired and I still don’t have enough hours in my day. I have a tip for you: If you’re postponing working on a pet project, hoping for that day in the future when you’ll only have time to write (or whatever your project is), that day will never…
