How to Make a Beginning
It’s hard to start to write. No matter the number of chapters or scenes or even emails I’ve written, when I have a blank page in front of me, I stop in my tracks. I see half a dozen different…
Category: Writing vs. Living
Timeout for Teachers
Dear Teacher, By this point, you’ve survived the flu, the stomach bug, and emotional outbursts from that one student in your classroom who never, ever misbehaves at home. “No problem,” you tell your principal as you wonder if the bottle…
Young Adult Round-up: The Power of Online YA Police
As an American who’s written a novel about an American girl caught up in political turmoil in Honduras that includes Honduran characters, I’m particularly concerned about controversies like the one blowing up on the Twittersphere over the YA book, A…
So You Want to Hit Your Goodreads Challenge This Year
At the end of 2018, for the third year in a row, I admitted defeat in my Goodreads Reading Challenge, missing my 45-book goal by seven books. So when the 2019 Reading Challenge posted this year, I was hesitant to…
Yes, Real Writers Have Day Jobs
The dreaded question, “How’s your book selling?” invariably sends me into a spiral of self-doubt. But I’m not the only writer who doesn’t make much, if any money, from her books. According to a recent New York Times article “Writing…
My 5-day solo writing retreat
I had worked it all out: I was going on a five-day solo writing retreat at a friend’s house in Vermont. Just the time and space I needed to do a deep dive into a final revision of my novel….