Z is for Zero

Celebrating the A to Z Blogging Challenge with quotations on the writing life. You can fix anything but a blank page. Nora Roberts The rough draft is like the ugly duckling, not the goose that laid the golden egg. Nurture your draft, work with it, revise it. Allow it to grow into the novel it …

X is for … What if X?

Celebrating the A to Z Blogging Challenge with quotations on the writing life. Two questions form the foundation of all novels: 'What if?' and 'What next?' (a third question, 'What now?' is the one an author asks himself every 10 minutes or so; but it's more a cry than a question.) Every novel begins with …

Y is for Years

Celebrating the A to Z Blogging Challenge with quotations on the writing life. It's not the years in your life but the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln You don't have to come back from the edge of death like me to see truth in Lincoln's statement. God has given us today as a gift. …

W is for Win

Celebrating the A to Z Blogging Challenge with quotations on the writing life. Now if you are going to win any battle, you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is …

V is for Victory

Celebrating the A to Z Blogging Challenge with quotations on the writing life. Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of which is filled with words. If you reach that point, you have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than sailing single-handed around the world. Tom Clancy This post, originally …

Stop and linger over spring?

Signs of spring are rushing past, but I am busy with my class... Isn't that the way life is? How much we miss! I captured some gentle springtime lovelies on my walk home yesterday. Small wonders in a park and neighbors' yards. I could have passed right by. Will beauty prompt me to linger next …

When “The End” is the beginning

Late last night--as the clock struck midnight, ha--I wrote and posted the final words of Darcy By Any Other Name. I have been working toward this for a long time. Two-and-a-half years, to be precise. (What can I say? The three Mercy's Embrace books took eight summers...) The hours in ICU are long, and one of …

Got NaNo Writer’s Block? Welcome to the club!

I signed up for NaNo out of desperation. Yes, many of my writing friends were doing it, but for me it was a matter of survival. (I would say it was "write-or-die," but having almost done that this last spring, I kind of can't use the expression anymore.) I have no time, no time for …

Quit and then Start Again

I found this today on Facebook (posted by the author) and I shared it in several writers' groups. And then I realized that you might like it too. Stopping and then starting again have become a way of life for me: It's an everyday battle, not only with writing but with so many important things. …

Day 25: Specialization is for insects

What Robert A. Heinlein said: "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch …