Memories
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On the sound of rain
The sound of rain woke me up this morning and for a moment I was about ten years old and I was exultant because rainy summer days were very rare where I lived. On a rainy summer day, I was not required to go outside and play. I could stay inside and read book and…
On finding good ideas
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…
How to: Your book and its competition
One of the most difficult parts of writing a non-fiction book proposal is putting together the competitive analysis (this goes by various names but is basically the section where you compare your book to others like it). People often make several common mistakes. 1. They write the competitive analysis after they’ve written the rest of the proposal —…
On fairy tales
When I was a child, I had an insatiable appetite for fairy tales. Rumpelstiltskin, Jack and the Beanstalk, the Elves and the Shoemaker, Three Billy Goats Gruff. I mean, their fantastical aspects aside, fairy tales are a lot like life: an unprepared person enters a chaotic, upside-down world, and tries to survive. Resourcefulness is necessary,…
On Tuesdays
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…
Traveling and the creative spark
One of the things I like about traveling is that I always end up with a bunch of story ideas while I’m doing it. I need the butt-in-chair time of staying home to actually do anything with these story ideas but I almost never have them if all I do is stay at home. Which…