It was my youngest son’s birthday today. He has a family of his own now to be daddy to and he’s a wonderful daddy. But I’m not sure he ever taught his kids to eat the peanut butter and pancake syrup on biscuits that his dad taught him to eat when he was just a little tyke. He could never …
What’s in a Name?
One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child’s name and how old he or she is. ~Erma Bombeck That’s true for mamas and also for writers. I’ll be giving a book talk and somebody will ask something about one …
On the Hunt for “The End”
One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane Once more I am searching for the end of a story. Once more it seems to be hiding from me behind a crazy mixture of words that don’t seem to be paving the …
Meeting a Character in Person
Readers make Blogging Fun One of the best things about blogging is getting to know you readers through your comments. You are such an encouraging community for me. Writers spend a lot of time in “solitary confinement” while digging stories out of their heads. Of course, we’re not totally alone. We have all those characters yanking on our imaginations trying …
Life Can Be Messy
When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor. (Eleanor Roosevelt) For the rainbow to appear in the sky, there has to be rain. Storms come in all our lives. Little dashes of rain sometimes and then at other …
Every Dog Needs a Name
Dogs, Dogs, and More Dogs Last week on my Facebook author page, I asked for suggestions for a dog’s name. I posted the first picture above as a look alike of the dog in my current work in progress. But he’s not exactly right. My dog may be a little more like picture two. And of course Oscar in picture …
Mystery Pictures and Writing Puzzles
Have you ever seen those close up, really close up, pictures of familiar objects and had no idea what you were looking at? I’m giving you a less challenging mystery picture tonight. Do you know what it is? Let me know what you guess. Or it could be you know what it is at first sight. Sometimes writing is like that. …
The Girl in the Picture
Some things are keepsakes that can’t be gotten rid of even though they have no real value other than sentimental attachment. This picture is one of those things here at my mother’s house that my sisters and I would never be able to throw away. When we were children, the picture hung in the corner of our aunt’s living room. It …
The Audacity to Begin Again
“In every artist there is a touch of audacity without which no talent is conceivable.” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goeth Tomorrow I will begin. I will sit in front of my computer and think of all the blank pages ahead of me. I will invent characters. I will imagine love and despair. I will seek action and listen to see if …
Before and After
I took some of the grandkids to the creek on Friday. It’s April and won’t be summer for quite a few more weeks, but the day was warm. In the seventies. The creek is spring fed from underground so the water stays chilly, but the plan was to keep on stepping stones, see the wildflowers, and maybe spot a crawdad …