Leap Year: A Four-Year Assessment of Life
I haven’t written a post about leap year before. The opportunity only comes along once every four years, and I had barely started writing this blog in February 2012. I tend to use mile markers to assess my life over the longer term. For example, on a major birthday, I might ask myself what I […]
Real Life Does Not Make Good Narrative
I’ve been reading Janet Burroway’s book, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. I started it a few months back, and every so often I dip into it again. I’m not reading it linearly. I started with the chapters on character, then moved to theme and setting, and last week I read the first chapter […]
My 400th Post: On Planning, Flexibility, and Commitment in Blogging and in Life
To my surprise, this is my 400th post, which seems worthy of mention. I last wrote about blogging in any detail on my 250th post, on July 28, 2014, about a year and a half ago. I write two posts every week—a schedule I have now maintained for almost four years—so I shouldn’t have been […]
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Social Media in Times of Stress
Before my father passed away on January 5, I had scheduled some posts on my Facebook author page about Clean Off Your Desk Day on January 12, and today’s Organize Your Home Day. I forgot about these posts in the middle of much bigger worries. So in addition to my emotional posts from this blog […]
Sculpting My Novel and My Life
My writing goal for the summer was to finish an edit of my second Oregon Trail book. I got it done just after Labor Day. Of course, that was not the end of the project. I know it needs another substantial edit. And probably another edit after that. And I’m working still on the first […]
Wallace Stegner: On the Teaching of Creative Writing
When I first began writing, I read lots of books on writing—many on the techniques of writing fiction, some on the writing life, and a few on grammar. But I didn’t read anything on teaching creative writing; that was too far beyond my ken. In the past seven years, I have drafted three novels, many […]