Month: June 2023

An acquaintance refers to her husband on social media as “MC” and she’ll recount how “MC and I went to the movies.” I can’t help but read that as “Main Character” and I keep wanting to take her aside and say, “Don’t be a sidekick in your own life! You be the MC!” Fortunately I…

“Follow up with Miranda,” the note on my schedule says. Miranda is the main character in a novel I’m writing and I’m staring at this note, trying to figure out why I’m following up with her. Did I mean “Revise Chapter 9” or something? So I open the mansucript, and I start exploring what kind…

Let me tell you a story about good ideas. When I first started teaching developmental editing, I taught a beginning class for a year or two and it became very popular. The sponsoring organization asked me to teach an intermediate class. So I did that. Finally that asked if I could teach another class, again…

Every Tuesday, we go to the farmers market and I give Jessica four dollars to buy a chocolate-pecan cookie from the French baker (literally a baker who is French). And every Tuesday there just happens to be a second cookie that is broken or otherwise not quite good enough to sell to customers that makes…

Me, on LinkedIn: Geez, you people are wound so tight. It’s just hustle hustle hustle, be A-MAH-ZING 24/7, be so good no one can ignore you . . . y’all make me need a nap. I mean, even mediocre people deserve to make a living. Gen Y person: I was a member of the Mediocre…

When I was writing The Wanderer, in several scenes I showed Lucinda making offerings to the gods in the morning. At one point she feels the breath of Leoma on her face. Leoma is the Old English word for ray of light, and I figured it was an apt name for the god of the…