Memories
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Meditation on book proposals
If you want to write a non-fiction book, you need a book proposal to convince agents to represent your book and to convince editors to publish it. As a writer, I’ve found that the process of writing the proposal helps me wrestle with the prospect of spending the next year with this project. Do I love…
The breath of Leoma
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…
Never trust a storyteller
“Never trust a storyteller,” Jonathan Gottschall says in The Story Paradox. There are a number of reasons he says this but primary among them is that we’re always manipulating the story for maximum effect. We think about what details to emphasize and which to downplay. We spend a lot of time deciding which rock will…
Farewell, romance, until we meet again
One of the things I have always enjoyed about reading romance is the happily-ever-after. I’m perfectly fine with terrible pain and trauma happening to all of the characters so long as they kiss and hold hands at the end. And as a romance writer I often enjoy figuring out how I’m going to get these…
California Dreamin’
When I moved to Los Angeles, I started writing the sequel to my earlier memoir (The Improbable Adventures of a Middle-Aged Woman). I kept written journals but something kept nagging at me to draw. I am not by any stretch of the imagination an artist. This did not stop me from trying. Not knowing how…
The stress of writing something worthy of the special journal
The notebook I’m currently writing in has a little golden retriever puppy playing with a ball on the cover. I ran out of writing materials on my recent travels and my daughter had an extra notebook so she let me use hers. I feel like I need to write something really excellent in order to…