My fiancee and I joke that I need to "practice relaxing." Unfortunately, it's one of those jokes that's funny because it's true. I tend to cram every spare second with some kind of obligation. 90% of the time, they're stuff I want to do: professional networking, friends, family, personal goals like writing or running. I'm … Continue reading Writing and Relaxing
My family is a big believer in routines, as most humans are. My mom used to start every morning on the couch drinking a cup of hot tea and watching The Weather Channel. This was complimentary to my morning routine, which involved rolling out of bed at the last possible moment, so I regularly shouted, … Continue reading A Writer’s Routine
The day I discovered that I could run and listen to audiobooks at the same time was life changing. I subscribed to Audible that day. It's a little shameful, actually. My library's free app, Hoopla, got me started on audiobooks and I don't know why I made the switch from complimentary to an app that … Continue reading Reading the Genre
April is Camp NaNoWriMo! I have set a goal for myself of 30 hours of time spent doing writing-related things. When I set the goal, I thought that would be 100% revision time. Now that it's April 3rd and I only have a handful of chapters left to edit, I'm beginning to realize it's not … Continue reading What to do with Camp NaNoWriMo
I used to write first thing in the morning. It was quite a delightful routine, truth be told. I'd wake up at 5, let the dog out, feed the cat, make myself a cup of tea, and then settle in to write for about an hour. Eventually the cat would join me and insist I … Continue reading Squeezing In the Revisions
“And what about those [writers' workshop] critiques, by the way? How valuable are they? Not very, in my experience, sorry. A lot of them are maddeningly vague. I love the feeling of Peter's story,someone may say. It had something... a sense of I don't know... there's a loving kind of you know... I can't exactly describe it.... … Continue reading When Are Workshops Helpful?
Despite literally doing social media for a living, I am missing out on an entire writing community on Twitter. I tend to tweet and provide social media for brands and spend little to no time on my own social media. That means my personal branding is limping along. At the urging of a friend, I … Continue reading #WritingHashtags
This weekend, I planned, booked, and paid for two weeks away from my house. I am very fortunate to have an employer with very generous leave policies and I don't gain anything from not taking allotted time off, so I'm resolved to use all of it this year. The first trip is my elopement/honeymoon. My … Continue reading A Tale of Two Vacations
I've been struggling lately with my manuscript, Hot Mess #1. I made a bit of a breakthrough last night, but I didn't do anything in December and January has been a slow start. My laundry list of excuses includes: Several instances of snow, which somehow made it impossible to write. Illness, where I spent several … Continue reading Level 3 Writer, Level 34 Human
When I was a teen, I had a habit of getting books I loved, reading them, then leaving them all over the house so I could pick them up and read them at all times. My mother loved finding paperbacks strewn across the kitchen table, between couch cushions, even by the toilet. There was a … Continue reading Jean Ferris Is Dead
The Merry Manuscript 