Do you ever do timed free-writing?  Do you ever just set a timer for ten or fifteen or thirty minutes and write about anything and everything till the bell rings?   You’re not writing about …

There was a time when I bought books about writing with a hunger and a purpose.  I just knew that one of them, or maybe two or three, held the secrets to the universe of …

Do you like pretty things?  Do you like pretty, sparkly things?  Do you like pretty, sparkly things  that dangle gracefully from your earlobes?  Do you like these?
Would you like to see them dangling gracefully from …

That is the purpose of description, you know, to suck your reader into your mind’s eye, and spew out for their benefit exactly what you’re seeing. Some people are really good at it.   …

I just ordered a bathing suit.  It’s still February and I’m looking at swimwear.  I do this every year.  And every year, I pass on the opportunity to clothe my body for a season of …

Wallace Stegner–remember him? He of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Angle of Repose? Known as the Dean of Western Writers and founder of the creative writing program at Stanford University?
I have …

Where do you begin a story? At the beginning, of course.
Well, maybe not. Hard news writers, the actual reporters among us, have to begin their leads with the time-honored 5Ws and H: …

Yes they do. Every day. In almost every way. This, as much as used-up eggs and hot flashes, seems to be a fact of my midlife.
Once, in my glory days, I could …

This year, the sixth annual BlogHer conference has a Writing Track, and as part of that track, there will be two Rooms of Your Own (ROYO).  If you have been to Blogher before, then you …

Late in the evening when there’s absolutely nothing else on, I have found myself on occasion watching Toddlers & Tiaras. It’s one of those train wreck reality shows in which overweight parents groom their …

Here is the first essay/blog post that will be the subject of an on-going editing dialogue. This is the first draft, untouched by human hands, as it were. Your job is to read …

Wanted: one taser that works through the television.  If I had had my hands on such a thing last night while watching the Newshour on PBS, I would not have suffered such a migraine headache …