Writing is like taking care of sick kids. It takes a lot of hard work, and a lot of time. Your kids and your writing always seem to need you, and sometimes they keep you up all night. Like taking care of sick kids, writing can involve cleaning up gross messes. Sometimes you need to […]
You know it’s a first draft of your novel when you write the following sentences in one of the closing scenes of your book: They kissed. And then they kissed some more. Yes. I just put that in my novel. It will be much different in the second draft. It will still involve kissing, but […]
A couple weeks ago I took my 2-year-old to the Phoenix Art Museum–and she loved it. Her favorite exhibit was filled with modern art and was titled, “Order, Chaos, and the Space Between: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Diane and Bruce Halle Collection.” This was one of the pieces. She got super excited and […]
Yes, you heard me. Writing is like kissing. Kissing, like writing, works better (or at least tends to be more interesting) if there’s a second person involved. We’ll call that person the audience. If you want your kiss (your writing) to go really well, it is often helpful if you know your audience. Also, kissing […]
Writing is like building a bird’s nest. It’s easy to get stuck with writing, to think, “I have nothing new to say.” As the oft-repeated Biblical proverb says, “There is nothing new under the sun.” Most of the time the point of writing is not to create something new, but rather to assemble the available […]