You’re in a deep funk and can’t get out of it. Writing is HARD and it’s getting the best of you. Publishing is even HARDER and it makes you want to cry. The words aren’t flowing, life is a big ball of stress and distraction, and just don’t know if you have it in you….
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Let me warn you: this is gonna be a bit of a tough love post. Ones of my pet peeves is when people say, “I’d write a book if only I had more time.” I’ve heard this so many times that it’s become a cliché. So I’ve started responding to it with yet another cliché: “You’ll…
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Though this week’s topic is how to keep writing when we don’t have time, I have a theory: 95% of the time, “I don’t have time” really means “I’m procrastinating” or “I’m burnt out.” I’ve been there too many times to count. And I’ve gotten out of it in traditional and not-so-traditional ways. 1. Change…
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How to keep writing when you don’t have time? I fear that this post hits at a tragic time for me. I have some time, but I’m reporting from the abyss, from the famous 65,000-word black hole of self-doubt and hair-pulling that occurs in a novel first draft when you start a book—and write pretty…
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Congrats to Sal, who won the copy of Hank Phillippi Ryan’s THE WRONG WOMAN last week! From the 2014 Debs… Natalia Sylvester got to see galley mockups this week and can’t stop saying it looks like a real book! She’ll get to share the cover any day now. Honestly. She swears she’s not making…
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We’re excited to welcome Rosemary Harris, whose latest novel, THE BITCHES OF BROOKLYN, has been called “smart, sassy, and sophisticated.” After writing four successful traditional mysteries, Rosemary has taken the exciting plunge into a new genre and publishing journey. Don’t you just love the title, The Bitches of Brooklyn? Be intrigued, be very, very intrigued…
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Happy post-Thanksgiving, my friends. I hope you had a wonderful day yesterday and are enjoying your leftovers today. (Thanksgiving leftovers are the best.) We’re talking disasters this week, and I’ll tell you what would be a disaster. Me. Today. In a mall. The last time I attempted a shopping spree the day after Thanksgiving —…
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Thanksgiving and Other Disasters is the theme of this week for us here at The Debutante Ball. Thing is, short of a frozen, raw turkey I served six hours later than I expected one year, I don’t really have any disasters to speak of. Well, until this year. A dear family member is ill, as in, living-in-the-hospital-ill…
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For the first Thanksgiving my husband and I hosted after we got married, we had big plans. We invited both sides of our family to our new place for the holiday meal. We went to a cooking class beforehand. We picked out wines, broke out the china, and sharpened our new German knives. We made…
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When I was 20 I caused a tiny fire in my oven. It wasn’t a big deal. It was perhaps the size of a quarter. I’d been trying to bake a cake and some of the batter leaked out and caught on fire. My sister saw it before it got any bigger, grabbed the fire…
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