Looking for that unique, thoughtful gift for your valentine?
Has your loved one always wanted to write but didn’t know how to begin? Does he/she write in a journal? Write poetry? Write short stories? These journals include ‘how to’ sections, inspiring quotes from other writers and lots of blank pages for your own creative writing.
This ‘Creative Writer’s Journal is the perfect gift.
I was recently working on my blog, and fiction that I had written over a year ago I realized as I cut and pasted excerpts from my writings (in preparation to posting on my own site, www.poetrysoup.com and other sites) that with all the flurry of editing, rewriting, deleting, (I have grown to love my delete key) and proofing I rarely stop to enjoy the final product.
And when I do go back, it’s always with an editor’s eye and I am very critical. I could have done so much better! Do you ever feel that way?
So as I was organizing and doing the housekeeping that a web site requires, I took a moment. As I chose and inserted excerpts, I stopped to just enjoy the poetry of the words, the dry humor in a line of dialogue, or a quip from one of my fictional characters…. Continue reading “Don’t forget to go back and……”
Q. What makes a writer great?
A. I think unforgettable stories and characters. People talk about beautiful turns of phrases, and lovely writing is a joy to read, but unforgettable characters and wonderful stories makes a writer’s work live on. Dickens created some of the most unforgettable characters in literature, and some amazing stories and so his work lives on, even if people don’t read him — his characters and stories have entered popular culture so deeply that people who’ve never heard of Dickens know Scrooge and Miss Haversham and Fagin.
Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like?
A. I think the important thing is to push on. Writers (IMO) tend to give up for two basic reasons — 1) they endlessly tweak and fiddle with the writing, and never get to finish the story. Perfectionism gets in the way. But the best piece of writing advice ever comes from Nora Roberts, also arguably the most prolific and successful writer of popular fiction in the world: “You can fix a bad page but you can’t fix a blank one.” So you need to push on and make yourself finish, even if you think it’s horrible. Then you can either fix it, or work out why it doesn’t work and learn from it. Writing, as with all things, takes practice. Not all the books you write will be publishable — some books have L-plates on them. But often the story idea is good and later, when you’re better at creating the architecture of a novel, you can revisit that early idea.
2) The second reason people don’t finish is…. Continue reading “Interview with best selling author, Anne Gracie (part 2)”
As promised, send me your poetry (Haiku) and I will post it. The surprising and delightful thing is I received poetry from all ages and from as far away as India and Argentina. It’s only fitting that we begin with one from the master.
Untitled (Bashô, Japan)
To enjoy life… (María del Carmen Chiappero, Argentina)
The lovely sun shines,
the wind blows by the window,
an old sweet song sounds.
With a melody,
Many melancholy words
leave a deep meaning.
We´re “dust in the wind”.
We´re all part of this giant big world,
but we´re very small.
Moments don’t come back
life goes on now, step by step
Then let´s enjoy life.
Continue reading “Haiku Poetry from around the World and here at Home!”
Not too long ago I heard from a dear friend that she was battling breast cancer and undergoing chemo. 
In response to this life threatening disease, she thumbed her nose at the cancer, shaved her head, and celebrated her new reality. She also began a blog to chronicle her journey. http://jodeenrevere.wordpress.com/ The blog is a beautiful combination of memories, loves, losses, family lost and regained, life threatening challenges, gratitude, the shining eyes of a child, of a dog, beautiful new human beings coming in and out of our lives.
This post is particularly for my Jodeen of the brave heart. The boiled down, scraped down, bone- raw condition of the human experience. All of it is why I will take every day (good or bad) and squeeze every bit of juice out of it.
She has come out the other side, a different woman in some ways, a new improved version of the other woman before.
A perfect time to celebrate our women who have survived and thrived!!!
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month!
DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS featuring INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS!
In addition to my twice weekly blog I also feature an interview with another author once a month. So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Barbara Delinsky and Elizabeth Hoyt will be my October authors.
To receive my posts sign up for my 
On the home page, enter your email address. Thanks!
Part 2: Continuing with this look into best selling author, Barbara Delinsky’s world:
Q. What makes a writer great?
A. Not fancy prose or even extensive research. I believe that a writer is great when she can produce book after book that readers love.
Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like?
A. Discipline. That’s it, short and sweet. Produce three pages each day before allowing yourself to leave the computer, and you will eventually finish a book. Do I start with an outline? Vaguely. But it’s sketchy and subject to change as the book grows and characters take over.
Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters?
A. Given that my books are character-driven, my characters come to me at the very start. That said, I don’t fully know them until I’m nearly halfway through the book. This is good. By not boxing them into a preconceived notion of who or what they should be, they take off on their own and do things I may not have planned. Those things are often what make the book shine.
Q. What inspires your story/stories ? Continue reading “Interview (part 2) with best selling author, Barbara Delinsky”
TS. I have been reading Barbara Delinsky for decades! Good, rich stories about believable and appealing people. Since October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, what better time to promote her stellar book, UPLIFT!
Now for the Interview I have been waiting years for:
Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing? Or tell us about your ‘dream’ work space.
A. I have an office over our garage, with windows front and back and four skylights. This makes it bright and sets it apart from the rest of the house.
Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)
A. I have no rituals. My desk may or may not be neat, depending on where I am in my book, and I may have tea or a soda or water nearby, depending on my mood. I actually like to vary things when it comes to my writing space and habits. Keeps me fresh.
Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?
A. Growing up, I was no reader. I much preferred playing outside to reading inside. Going through high school and college, I read few books that weren’t required for school. It was only when my children were young and I needed an escape from full-time motherhood that I began to really read.
Q. Do you have a set time each day to write or do you write only when you are feeling creative?
A. I am usually working at my computer by six in the morning, Monday through Friday. Creativity? Some days it’s there, some days not, but I work nonetheless. If what I produce one day is bad, I either edit it the next or ditch it. I do believe that inspiration is 90% perspiration.
Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?
A. Limit your time at the computer. Two hours a day are better than none. Keep at those two hours, day after day, and you’ll eventually have something to show.
Q. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing and for how long?
A. No. I don’t ‘get lost.’ I cut my teeth as a writer when I had three young sons at home. I stole writing time when they were napping and, eventually, at school. Given that they were my first priority, ‘getting lost’ was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
Q. Who or what is your “Muse” at the moment ?
A. Bloomingdale’s. I tell myself that if I produce something worthwhile at my computer in the morning, I can run to the mall that afternoon.
Q. When did you begin to write seriously?
A. I was thirty-four and starting to look for part-time work when I noticed a piece in the morning paper about women who wrote category novels. They made it sound easy and very do-able while raising a family, so I decided to give it a shot.
Q. How long after that were you published?
A. I spent two months reading the kind of novel I wanted to write, wrote my own in three weeks, sent it to various publishing houses, and got a bid for it six weeks later. I was lucky. I happened to deliver the right manuscript to the right editor at the right time. If I were to do it over again, I might not be as lucky.
Don’t Miss it! Part 2 of this fascinating writer’s life coming on October 9th.
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DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS featuring INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS!
In addition to my twice weekly blog I also feature an interview with another author once a month. So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Barbara Delinsky and Elizabeth Hoyt will be my October authors.
To receive my posts sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Thanks!
It was just a few short years ago that being self published was a dirty word. People would call your work a ‘vanity book’ or a ‘one book wonder’. You would have to warehouse 10’s of thousands of inventory for your book and then schlep it around as far as you could. All of that is in the past! We can hold our heads up high, write our work and get it in the hands of our readers for, sometimes, as little as a few hundred bucks. If you don’t hire a graphic designer for the cover, then publishing is literally FREE.
Now here’s the “Good Company” I claimed………….
How Beatrix Potter self-published Peter Rabbit
The aspiring children’s writer was fed up of receiving rejection letters – so on this day in 1901 she self-published a certain book about a naughty rabbit
So you think self-publishing is a 21st-century phenomenon? Continue reading “Self-published Authors! We are in Good Company!”
I have just finished up the fourth in my series of Journals/Handbooks for the creative writer entitled REAL MEN WORK OUT…on PAPER. The blank journal is filled with quotes that I hope will inspire the writer in you. Since I hand picked every quote for these books, what better time to share some of the new ones I found. This particular journal is dedicated to men who love to write. Great gift idea!
“No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.” Oscar Wilde
I was watching an interview with Pharrell Williams (composer/rapper) and he said, “I’m a room without a roof.” That struck home with me. Some of my detractors say that I can’t stay with one thing, in my writing. That I jump around from prison stories to children’s books, to mysteries, and on to poetry.
Yes! ‘I’m a room without a roof.’ There is no ceiling (boundaries) I can fly! I stay open to the universe and to ideas and inspiration. Watching that interview, Pharrell inspired me to write about my room with no roof.
Don’t let anyone lock your creative self in a room and slam the ‘roof’ shut. Family, friends, spouses, all want what they think is best for you. They love you right? If I had listened to one friend, I would never have stepped on a stage. When I told one of my oldest friends that I was going to an acting conservatory, she was frightened. When we talked it out, she was actually afraid that she would lose me. I went on to have a 30+ year career on stage, acting and directing.
Continue reading “Are You a Room Without a Roof?”
