My heart picked up speed when I checked the caller ID and saw a number I didn’t recognize. It raced a little faster when I flipped open the phone. “Hello?” No, it wasn’t someone from the Golden Heart committee calling to tell me I’d finaled. It was Sean, from...

Normally, I sleep until at least 9 a.m. I have to, after working until midnight most nights and not getting to sleep until after 3 a.m. This morning, however, I wanted to take advantage of “Free Pastry Day” at Starbucks. (It’s not often you can get something for nothing,...

The old saw says there are three R’s — readin’ ‘ritin’ and ‘rithmetic — but I gave up on that last one years ago. These days, I find myself struggling to strike the right balance between the other two. I’ve heard many, many writers say that to write well,...

I figure there’s one sure way to beat Golden Heart anxiety: By keeping myself too busy to think about the elusive Call that I could get sometime Thursday. That’s at least one of the reasons I’ve set down not one, not two, but THREE goals to accomplish before our...

I love attending my NARWA meetings because I always come back inspired. Today, as a carpool of one, I even got to plot out a couple of scenes in my head. I missed the conversation and companionship on the drive, but the thinking time was great — and it...

Thanks to inspiration that struck on the drive down to the Boyfriend’s, I ended up writing 2,595 words today. According to the Excel spreadsheet I’ve been keeping, that’s almost the most words I’ve written in a single day. (Only one day is higher, with 2702.) Now I’m that much...

Getting in the habit of writing is really helping. I got another 1,000 words written today, bringing my total on Meg & Matt’s story to 44,090 — many of them written since Jan. 17. That leaves a minimum of 11,000 words — max 16,000 — to finish this story....

The dialogue presentation I’m giving to NARWA on Saturday is almost ready. I’ve practiced it more than once (once in front of a human audience and twice for my cats, who didn’t seem impressed) and keep finding things to change with each telling. I’ve also been plugging away on...

Get your mind out of the gutter. I was going to say “pens.” I spent an hour or so with the notebook and a pen this afternoon, hand-writing what turned out to be a good scene. It was full of both love and laughter — what more can you...

I’ve had a busy Friday. I not only wrote about 800 words on Meg & Matt’s story, but also finally readied the talk I’m doing on dialogue at next Saturday’s NARWA meeting. I know, I know. I’ve been procrastinating. A more conscientious person would have started preparing long ago....