There was a mountain lion in our neighborhood a week ago, and apparently she was in heat. Yeah, that’s a sentence I never dreamed I would type. But now that I live in Colorado, I find that many of my conversations involve animals I have, until recently, most often encountered on TV. We’re only 45 […]
writer's life
10 Tips for Working at Home
This pandemic has created a new army of at-home-workers, most of whom didn’t choose or want this new experience of working from home. But many of us have been doing this for years. We’ve tried (and abandoned) a bunch of tricks over the years for staying focused on work. If you’re one of the new […]
Why We Need Other Writers in Our Lives
You know what they say. They try to tell us that writing is a lonely calling. That we should be huddled in attics, with our eyesight failing and our shoulders hunched, madly scratching away at our craft while the world rotates somewhere out there, beyond the window, without us. The problem is, that’s not necessarily […]
Teenage Boys Who Read and Other Mythological Creatures
Just when I think I’ve got him figured out, my teenage son does something unexpected. He buys a book. Doesn’t he know teenage boys don’t read books? Doesn’t he realize he’s defying all the publishing experts who have written him off as a demographic? Does he ENJOY being a rebellious anomaly? Apparently. Honestly, my 16-year-old […]
Finding Familiar Stories in Sicilian Ruins
An ocean scene mosaic at the Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina in Sicily Standing in the remains of a palace built nearly two thousand years ago, I stared at mosaics on the floor depicting stories I knew. And those stories aren’t just two thousand years old. In fact, those stories were already a […]
12 Reasons Why Writers Like Lists
1. A list captures thoughts quickly before they escape into the ether. Thoughts are slippery little devils, after all. 2. When you start making a list, word-association becomes a common by-product, leading to creative tangents that sometimes prove to be exactly the thing you were looking for. 3. Writing a list makes you look busy, […]
