Santa Claus flies a sleigh pulled by reindeer, lumbers down brick chimneys, and stashes gifts under light-strewn evergreens. In operating rooms across the country, surgeons dress in hospital-green outfits, don paper masks, and remove tumors from unconscious patients. Behind closed doors, writers sit in desk chairs reading, thinking, and writing stories, poems, and plays. We hear, “You are what you do.” How about, “Do what you are.” Are you Santa? Are you a surgeon? Are you a writer? If you’re … Read More »

A Velcro Moment is a bit of writing that sticks with a reader. Velcro, you probably know, is a strip of fabric with tiny “hooks” that “mate” with another fabric strip that has smaller loops. These strips attach to each other, until pulled apart. (Thank you, Wikipedia.) Isn’t Velcro a perfect image to illustrate readers getting hooked on your writing? How do we make our writing unforgettable? National Book Award winner, Barry Lopez, offered gems of advice about this a … Read More »

On January 22, 1999, I attended a writerly event at the University of Central Florida: “Distinguished Author Series: Margaret Atwood.” Yes, THE famous Margaret Atwood. You may know that Atwood, a Canadian, authored the best-selling, horrifying, dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), which television producers — with their sights on America’s currently inflamed neurosis — are feeding the airwaves as a television series for all the world to watch. But in 1999 when I was standing in the aisle to … Read More »

A writer aiming to self-publish her first book treated me to coffee recently to “pick my brain” about the marketing plan I used to promote my self-published book. I wasn’t sure how much I could help her. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Each book, depending on its genre and target audience, requires its own personal marketing plan—like a custom-tailored suit. My book, I reminded her, is a memoir. Hers is a cookbook! But for the pleasure of her company—and free … Read More »

Besides the satisfaction of seeing our words published, what other basic characteristic might writers have in common? Hint: it makes publication possible. Annie Dillard lays it out for us in her book, The Writing Life, when she relays a mini-story of a fellow writer who had a student who asked, “Do you think I could be a writer?” “Well,” the writer said, “do you like sentences?” We don’t find out what the student thought or did after that answer, but … Read More »

Do you yearn for a better way to organize your writing projects? Do you have a big one to manage, such as a novel or memoir? Does publishing your work seem like an impossible dream? Let me share a method that helped me. A few years ago, while I was writing my memoir, a friend told me about a little book, The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller with Jay Papasan. The book includes … Read More »