I returned home from my conference in Chesapeake, Virginia to discover that my 5th grade son hadn’t done his math report or this month’s book report. It was a huge surprise, especially as I didn’t know he had a math report and he’d told me the book report wasn’t due for another week or so. […]
Category: Writing Life
Intro to Fiction Writing
At UCLA when I wanted to switch from Theatre Arts to Creative Writing, I had to take an Intro to Creative Writing course. This was the mid to late 80’s and everybody was very Goth at the time and the cool, clever, real writers all wore black and slouched, or spoke in whispers of intellectual […]
Bogging in Blogland
Em, my web designer, warned me before I started my online diary/ JaneBlog last May that there would be problems with it. She knew I’d get busy, that I might come to resent the time required to update it; she feared I’d write too much that was too personal and not really useful in terms […]
Booking It
I’m in Los Angeles to join a Pi Phi alumni group tonight. I’m a bit fuzzy on the details—i.e., is this a book club, or just an alumni group? And are we discussing The Frog Prince, or the writing life? Fortunately I’ve learned to wing it pretty well–those 6+ years of teaching have come in […]
Time Out
Don’t read this if you’re an aspiring writer or a die-hard reader that doesn’t want to see behind the magic curtain. It will discourage and disillusion you, and just possibly annoy you. No. This blog isn’t for the dewy-eyed hopefuls, the ones still wearing rose colored glasses. It’s for the tired writers, the moms who […]
Writers & Writing
So many of my close friends are writers. Most are published, a few are waiting for the big call, but we all write. Some of us more than others. My friend Sinclair has been working like a madwoman to get her first book bought–she’s been in writing hell for years–getting requests for completes, madly finishing […]
No More Suspense
I forget that people actually read my online diary and remember what I’ve written. I certainly forget what I write. Fast. There’s no way I could survive if I kept track of all the fictional dramas I create–the sex, the lies, the heartbreak and scandal. And then with the diary….well, I often reveal waaaaay more […]
World Building
One of my college babysitter’s friends was over last night and she loved my office with its three bulletin board collages. She wanted to know about the collages, the stacks and stacks of magazines in my office, and how I use the collages and magazines in my writing. I told her leafing through magazines (my […]
Patience, Jackass
Nice title, huh? The title comes from a little story my mother used to tell us kids when we were traveling and getting hungry/restless/bored. It was a story of a man and his donkey and they were traveling through a desert, or somewhere quite hot and arid without any place to get something to drink. […]
Bat out of Hell
All right, I’ll tell you my secret. You want to know how I produce books and travel as much as I do? You want to know the truth? I don’t write. And then I write a lot. How much is a lot? Could be 75 pages a day, three days in a row. Could be […]
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