• The Buoyancy of Words

    Fair warning: I’m going to stretch a swimming metaphor well beyond my non-metaphorical comfort level. Feel free to believe that this discomfort serves some greater meta-metaphorical purpose. Then let me know what it is so I can say “yeah, I meant to do that.” Writers spend a lot of time going nowhere. We start out strong enough, with a perfect swan dive into the ocean of ideas. [Already the metaphor is causing me gastric distress.] But after a few weeks or days or hours of swimming in a Direction We’re Absolutely Sure Of (Until Suddenly We’re Not), we find ourselves far from the dock and nowhere near the distant shore.…

  • How Do You Know You’re Growing as a Writer?

    I’m not sure how to open this post. I thought about playing the simile card and saying something about how becoming a better writer is a lot like becoming a better other thing – a better architect, a better juggler, a better OPI color namer, a better human. That would have been entirely true. And entirely boring. I also considered manufacturing a conversation between a beginning writer and a seasoned writer that could foreshadow the post’s inevitable wisdom. I probably would have included an exchange like this: Seasoned Writer: I’m told you want to know how I got to be me. Beginning Writer: Yes. Tell me what to do, oh…

  • This Could Be a Problem

    I like languishing in obscurity. Languishing is my love language. This could be a problem. Well, not yet. But it will be if I reach any of my writing goals for the year, which include: a little book based on my #thewritinglife Twitter updates; the first novel in a YA series; a contemporary adult novel that’s been six years in the making; a few more blog posts; at least one provocative tweet. You can’t have a successful writing career unless you embrace marketing and self-promotion. I get it. If no one knows about you or your book, the book won’t sell. In my past life as an editor in a…

  • The Worst Book Ever. Or Not.

    “Coldplay sucks!” I had my car window open (as required between blizzards by Colorado law). Mylo Xyloto was playing on a recently-purchased stereo that had doubled* the value of my 2000 Jetta. I didn’t see who shouted it. Probably not the elderly woman on the sidewalk who was attached by a taut pink leash to a matching taut pink poodle. And surely not the five-year-old doing donuts on his Big Wheel in the driveway across the street. It’s a pretty safe bet the Chris Martin hate came from someone in the huddle of teenagers admiring their generation’s ironic muscle car, a tricked out Scion tC. I ignored the shout and passed through…

  • The Room in the Elephant

    It lies on the kitchen table like a tipped tombstone, this year of late nights and early mornings, of exhilaration and frustration, of too much coffee and too few showers. The Froot Loops box is prostrate, casualty of another rushed breakfast. The kids are out the door. The dog is bark-begging back in. The spouse is gridlocked, Van Halen blasting him into the past if only for one more exit. His parting word to you, “finally.” You repeat the word in whisper even though you know better. This is just another beginning. But it’s done. Your first novel. Or your tenth. Drafted, redrafted, written and re-written. You run your finger…

  • A Word, Please

    Think of a word you don’t like – one that makes you squirm. Sure, it could be a common word like “moist” or “chalky,” but choose something edgier – something you almost never say in real life. Got it? Okay, have a seat. Your word would like to have a word with you. Word: Hey. You: Um…hey? Word: Do you know why you’re here? You: Not exactly. Word: We need to talk about me. You: I don’t think we do. Word: Oh, right. This is where you tell me you don’t need me; that you never need me. You: Um…yeah. Something like that. Word: Because there are millions of words…

  • Absent Brilliance

    Brilliance isn’t something you can buy for yourself. You can only receive it as a gift. Some writers – I’d call them The Lucky Ones except for the fact that their brilliance is usually accompanied by a corresponding (and non-returnable) insanity – are granted the gift by the gods. Or The God. Or the universe. Or fate. (Pick one.) They’re born with it. They can’t deny it. They can’t escape it. It is woven into their being. Tell them to write something bad, they’ll try, and brilliance will whisper in the words they choose to leave out. The naturally brilliant are not perfect. Far from it. But there is an…