Write What You Notice – a Creative Colloquy Workshop

Write What You Notice – a Creative Colloquy Workshop

Tonight, I attended another of the excellent writer’s workshops put on by Creative Colloquy. The topic was to emphasize the role of observation in our work as writers. Tiffany Aldrich MacBain led us through examples and exercises. We used a guide she’d given us in collecting information based on observation and then spun a scene…

Read More Read More

Waking up in the Country

Waking up in the Country

Groggy eyes open, shut again in a denial of the presence of daylight. Roll over, snuggle my sweetheart, fall back to sleep. Slowly coming to consciousness again. Sound of the ceiling fan and the birdsong coming from outside through the small opening in the window. We’re at about 2500 feet above sea level, with a…

Read More Read More

On Beginnings and Endings

On Beginnings and Endings

This morning I’m thinking about beginnings and endings. I am fascinated and envious about brilliant, compelling beginning paragraphs. The start to a story is a welcome mat, an open door revealing an entire world for the reader to explore. Drawing them into that world is the job of the beginning paragraphs. Thinking about beginnings led…

Read More Read More

The Doldrums

The Doldrums

I was probing my mental status this morning and trying to find a word to describe how I’ve been feeling for the last week and it came to me – doldrums. I’m in the doldrums. My mental ship has been becalmed. The thing about your ship being ‘becalmed’ is that it is not calming. Doldrum…

Read More Read More

Results of a Creative Colloquy Workshop

Results of a Creative Colloquy Workshop

Creative Colloquy has adapted well to the covid-19 shut-in lifestyle so many of us have found ourselves in this past year. They’ve hosted online readings, workshops and other gatherings. I’ve been participating in everyone I can schedule myself for, which is 100% more than I had been attending when the events were hosted at brick-and-mortar…

Read More Read More

This Week in Novel Writing

This Week in Novel Writing

I worked on my novel 5 of 7 days this last week. Time-wise, most of my work was editing of the first draft written in November. In terms of impact, yesterday’s work was the homerun. When I wrote during NaNoWriMo, it was fast and furious and often a decision I’d made days or weeks prior…

Read More Read More

Week 8 of Draft 2 Work

Week 8 of Draft 2 Work

I realize it would be good to come up with a real title for my work-in-progress. For now, I’m calling it Life is Like an Amusement Park, though I don’t think that truly fits what’s happening in the story. So The Haunted Amusement Park? The Mystery of the Haunted Amusement Park? Sounds very Nancy Drew…

Read More Read More

Facing Fear

Facing Fear

Brené Brown ends her Unlocking Us podcast with a rapid fire set of questions for her guest. One of these is, to paraphrase, ‘When you are full of fear, about doing something, what do you do?‘ Tell me if this situation sounds familiar, at least from pre-COVID times. You’re somewhere in a group. Maybe it’s…

Read More Read More

Books of 2020

Books of 2020

Last year I read 33 books. This is well shy of my goal of 50, though I am pleased with the quality of what I read. I’ll share my list and some of my impressions. I’d love to hear what your favorite reads of 2020 were. Sandman Vol. 8, Neil Gaiman, et al. On Earth…

Read More Read More

Novel update and more

Novel update and more

I am in the midst of the second draft of the novel I created during NaNoWriMo. My goal is a chapter a week. I started during the first week of January and I’m got three chapters into second draft, so it’s going well. It feels like a good pace, a pace I can sustain. The…

Read More Read More