Category for all my writer-related stuff
When I was sixteen, I attended my first writing workshop, bringing with me my first attempt at a short story. It was a first draft, all rough, no editing, no outline beforehand. It was everything you would expect from a sixteen-year-old’s first short story. In a word, it was crap. Read more…
Back in my dating days, I often had to deal with Dudebro Jerks. They would ask you out, and when you said, “No, I’m not interested,” they would demand an EXPLANATION. They would hound you looking for the solution to this asking-out puzzle like you were a stuck vending machine Read more…
It annoys me when people say “you have to believe in yourself!” Do you? Do you really? I think of the people I’ve met who really believed in themselves. There’d be one in every writing class. They’d submit some unreadable, meandering block of prose with no plot, no characters, and Read more…
In Second Grade, our teacher said we would Make Books. She had a special book stapler, and a collection of wallpaper samples we could pick for our covers. First we would write out our stories and count the words so she could determine how many pages to give us – Read more…
I have always considered myself a feminist, since I first learned the term as a child. (Though, like many people, for years I naively insisted I was “an egalitarian” because of course I was pro equality, not pro-female. I grew out of that. Feminism IS belief in equality. It’s only Read more…
Scientists have discovered that we build pathways in our minds for our fictional friends the same as for people we’ve actually met. (Article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-storytelling-animal/201206/the-power-fake-gay-and-black-friends ) So yes, you really can say Janet on the Good Place is your best friend. Your brain feels the same about her as it does Read more…
In writing workshops, sometimes you find yourself with nothing to say about a particular story. It’s either so not your thing you don’t know how to improve it, or it’s just plain good already. The dangerous temptation is to come up with something to say, anyway, something minor or weird, Read more…