“So tedious is this day As is the night before some festival To an impatient child that hath new robes And may not wear them” –Juliet, Romeo and Juliet So tomorrow’s the day. I’ve wanted to be a novelist since I was 11. I’ve been working on this book for six and a half years. And tomorrow, it becomes real. Really, truly real. Is it okay to admit I sort…
I spent months dreading my edit letter. One thing I excel at in particular is imagining the worst possible outcome in any situation, and then obsessing over it at two in the morning. You may think two o’clock is an inconvenient time to obsess over edit letters and other things, but I’m here to tell you that is a very fine time indeed. First of all, no one else is…
Self-care is not a thing I am great at. High-functioning anxiety means that I have a lot of trouble relaxing, and I feel guilty about it any time I even get close. There’s always something I should be doing, after all. Certainly always something else I could be doing. I try to absorb the good advice out there about self-care, and I try to take heart in inspirational aphorisms, but there’s…
I listened to a woman read a chapter from her romance novel about gay male truck drivers. Within a few minutes, it became glaringly obvious that she knew nothing about gay men or truck drivers. I was incensed—this was my community she was writing about so badly—but I was also chagrined. I was reminded of my own 300-page gay romance novel I had written several years before. Like the author…
My emergence as a writer and a mother occurred nearly simultaneously—I was suddenly flooded with stories when I was pregnant with my second child, and my oldest was two years old. Writing for me has always involved coping with distractions of the small child variety. Yet, I earned two college degrees and wrote over one thousand pages while mothering two small creatures over nearly a decade, and I like to…
Publishing is rife with fear. Fear of bad reviews, fear of being dragged, fear of being forgotten or never published again or having our books canceled. And the thing is, some of these fears will, inevitably, be realized. We writers aren’t perfect, and the publishing industry certainly isn’t perfect. Something is bound to go wrong. I realize that, as I write this, I’m in the calm before the storm. I’m done…
I have always been afraid. Whispering thoughts circle my head at night—so many things I’ve done, words I’ve said that I can’t take back. How my choices might hurt my children—the things that I can’t undo as well as the things that I don’t want to undo. I wonder what people really think about me, and who they tell. Will my children overhear them? It’s not lies I am afraid…
I really don’t like talking about fear. Oh, little fears, sure. I detest rollercoasters because I’m sure they’re going to break and kill me, I’ve been known to dive under picnic tables to get away from wasps which are clearly dark minions sent forth from the bowels of hell, and my horror of open water has been reinforced for decades by nightmares and augmented by that time my baby sister almost…
I’m an extroverted introvert—or what I like to call a “social introvert.” I’ve taken the Myers-Briggs test several times, and half the time it decides I’m an introvert, and the other half of the time it goes the opposite direction, depending on how long it’s been since I’ve had large-scale social interaction. My personality can best be summed up as, “Please don’t make me go anywhere! How come we never…
Y’all. I didn’t get home until almost 7 last night. I’ve only spent one entire day at home since August 13th, and I am a homebody. I (try to) maintain a full-time job, a healthy marriage, and I’m currently actively working on THREE manuscripts. And that’s not taking into account the dogs, or exercise, or eating real, healthy food on a regular basis. I clearly did not get the memo…
