Why today of all days?
My cell phone doesn’t get that many calls. Aside from calls from the Boyfriend, and occasional calls from the roommate, it mostly remains silent. That’s fine 364 days of the year. But there’s one day that I want the phone to ring: Golden Heart finalist call day. In 2011,...
My take on time management
Let’s get something straight: I might not be the best choice to talk about time management. As I sat preparing the remarks about time management I was supposed to deliver — less than 12 hours before I was set to deliver them — I certainly felt like a fraud....
March already?
If it weren’t such a cliche, I’d ask where the heck the year has gone. It seems impossible that March is already upon us — and not just March, but mid-March. What happened to January and February? Lost to a haze of working, working out, reading, tweeting, writing and...
Link love redux
There’s no shortage of reading material on the ol’ information superhighway. Here are a few of the links I’m loving right now: — I wish I’d seen Nathan Bransford’s post on the art of being unsentimental about your characters months ago. Might have saved me from having to muse about being...
Ye-ouch
No doubt about it, writing is hard. First off, it’s not easy to make the time to sit down in front of the computer. Life — in the form of work commitments and family time — so often gets in the way. Yet we do it week in and...
Spreading some link love
Over on my other blog, I regularly collect links to share. Sometimes they’re articles that challenge me. Other times they just make me laugh — something we all should do more often. But they’re always worth a read. I’ve been saving up a few writing-related items. Enjoy! — Someone...
Too nice?
I’m afflicted — cursed, if you will — with being that most heinous of attributes: Nice. Too nice. Some people — normal people — might think nice is a good thing. And that is, indeed, the case when you’re dealing with fellow human beings. A little kindness can go...
In defense of the e-reader
In my other life (my day job), I’m a page designer and sometimes writer. I used to write a weekly column called “Adventures in Cooking,” which eventually became the basis for my weight-loss blog, Adventures in Weight Loss, Cooking and Life. My job duties have shifted and I don’t...
A writer’s Thanksgiving
With today being a time to give thanks, I thought it’d be fun to reflect on some of the things I’m thankful for in my writing life this year. My Golden Heart final. Having “Beauty and the Ballplayer” final in the GH did more than open new doors. It...
Hard truth
What do you do when one trusted friend tells you to scrap the first chapter of one of the stories you plan on entering in the 2012 GH? If it’s a chapter you love, chock-full of hilarious lines and you’re not ready to hear the fateful directive to “chop...