What would happen if the news about rejections, bad sales, crappy reviews was simply that: news?
What if I didn’t make it mean anything?
Like…
I’m a bad writer
I’m not successful
I’m not smart enough
I’m not good enough…
I am beginning the year with an inquiry into joy. Specifically joy in my writing.
Last year, the joy dribbled out of me. Let’s just say some things happened and gradually, writing began to feel like a duty. A have-to.…
When you’re given a prompt like love or longing, it can get a little esoteric. It works to ground the a big topic in a concrete object. It is way to tell something slant.
I know I have one body.
One body. One planet from which to land and take off.
In the beginning, it feels like we have many bodies.
The infant.
The toddler.
The little kid.
The teenager.
The young woman.
And…
I’ve never been one to stare at the stars. The ocean. The Mountains. Sunrises. Sunsets. I’m all about them. I gulp them in with my eyes. Stars. Nighttime. Not so much. I don’t know what I’m looking at. It’s…
The trick with big concepts in your writing is that they lay flat on the page if you go at the them intellectually. But if you talk about them in terms of something specific like an object, the concept comes…
The Writing Prompt is Same But Different. Set the timer for five minutes and write. It won’t be perfect but it might be sharp and clear. I like to use prompt to get out of the way of myself. The…
My poem, The Knee Poem, was published and selected as Editor’s Choice for the Ocotillo Review! I had the pleasure of reading it at Malvern Books in Austin, TX this summer.
I kept waiting for the event.
Stroke.
Heart failure.
Back legs giving out completely.
But the event didn’t come. Sombra our 15-year-old Labrador/Whippet mix was not going to have an event. He was going to stay. That was his job.…
Kwame Alexander’s talk about his path to publication and winning the Newbery Medal for the Crossover is about saying yes. He believes in the yes. So do I.
So when Writers League of Texas Program Director Michael Noll emailed and…
In a way, reading a writers’ blog is a bit like looking behind the wizard’s curtain. You get to see where my ideas come from, who inspires me, how I think and what I care about. If you want to know what I’m thinking about, please subscribe to my blog below.
A Tree grows in Sedona
Subscribe
Writing Resources
Because we work by ourselves, writers and illustrators often feel alone. We aren’t but sometimes we need to be reminded of all the great resources around us. Here are a few that I rely on for classes, news and general good thinking:
