Reasons I Love this Season

The Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas are filled with more than a few of my favorite things. Twinkling lights and trees, the music and movies. Sparkling snow and shining stars. Dears and deer, ribbons and bows, wrapping and wreaths. Warm woolen scarves, sweaters, slippers and mittens. Leather and furry collars, cuffs, muffs and moccasins. The…

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Write like Van Gogh or…

Write like your favorite artists throughout history painted. The ones who made history, and even those who didn’t. Breaking rules, from the heart, after years or decades of practice. And standing on shoulders of giants who went before them, by following those genius paths, though still originating their own style. Coloring outside conventional lines, or…

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Based on True Stories, Inspired by, or?

Just as I was going to reveal ‘secrets’ about the true story inspiration of my latest novel here, I realized that all my novels have been more or less rooted in reality, and real people’s lives. Hence, the following thoughts. A novel doesn’t have to be based on a true story, nor even exactly inspired…

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Post Novel Depression

Is there such a thing as ‘Post Novel Depression’, and is it anything like or related to ‘Post Natal Depression’? You can be assured that I have suffered the former a number of times, though I can’t say that I have fallen ill to the latter. Over some years, I have given birth to both…

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Painting with Words

Prose is usually painting with words, is it not? Particularly anything poetic, we’d suppose. Still, writing any prose is more similar to putting a painting together than one might realize at first glance. Paints or words, it takes an artist to sculpt it into a shape worth enjoying. Whether painting or writing, sketch your ‘story’…

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Character Driven Stories

If you find fiction devoid of action, suspense, mystery, horror, comedy or even history, boring; a much more character driven story might not be your complete cup of tea. Still, does not all fiction need realistic or relatable characters that the reader will care about, to succeed? To me, characters are key. Character driven is…

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Jane Austen on the Novel and Novelist

In Northanger Abbey (chapter five), Jane Austen shared her thoughts on novelists who disparage other novelists, and how writing novels draw on many talents to achieve, and are just as worthy as periodicals, news, history and etcetera: “… I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel–writers, of degrading by their…

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Toggle Writing Method

About a year ago when one of my sons challenged me to try NaNoWriMo for the first time, I confess I was not initially thrilled to accept that ‘write a novel in a month’ gauntlet as thrown down. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I could do a rough draft of a new novel in…

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Fathers, Mothers, Babies: it’s about Family

Babies have been on my mind a bundle lately. I see them everywhere and smile every single time I see one. I love to smile right at them. To get one of their sweet little smiles in return is a big bonus. I love to catch their eye, to make a happy connection. I like…

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How I Spent My Grandsons’ Summer Vacation

As a kid, I used to lament more or less that every September back at school I didn’t get to write a story about having gone to Disneyland in the summertime. Everyone I knew went to Disneyland for their summer vacations. Except me. Well, almost everyone. But, not my family and me. No, instead, I…

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