It’s so easy to be jealous. To let the green-eyed monster into your mental house, allow it to sit at the kitchen table in your cerebellum and tell you stories about how things could be so much better if your life was just like that person’s over there. And this is especially true if you’re a writer trying to make it in this often-cruel world. After all, things aren’t fair….
I’m turning forty this year. And when you’re a middle-aged mom writing science fiction at four in the morning, it’s hard to look at all the startling young ingenues in their adorable city apartments, writing life-changing novels, getting MFAs, doing interviews with Lithub— —Let’s just say that I’ve been there. I understand. I thought my life was over in my early thirties when I turned out a truly awful epic…
As someone who dealt with many complications getting pregnant, I was excited to talk to Sarah DiGregorio, who writes about premature birth in her book EARLY: An Intimate History of Premature Birth and What It Teaches Us About Being Human (Harper). In this reported memoir, the freelance journalist, who covers both healthcare and food for many publications (including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, and Catapult)…
Let’s be honest. Most of us who write novels want them to be made into films. It’s just really fun, and the option money isn’t bad, either. (Plus, we all secretly fear more people will probably experience our stuff if it shows up on Netflix someday.) I’ve worked in small-scale videomaking for over a decade — YouTube, music videos, weddings, and commercials, both shooting and editing. I’ve never worked on…
God, the word “brand” seems to be the antithesis of actual writing. But when you’re writing non-fiction that’s what publishers want to know. Not, “I have an idea for the greatest relationship advice book in the world,” but, who are YOU to write a relationship book?? See even if it’s the greatest business/relationship/pregnancy book in the world, or even a memoir on addiction/prison/infertility — it’s going to have to join dozens…
It’s Christmas Eve, which means I’m type type typing, attempting to finish my long list of deadlines before I put on my Santa hat and artfully arrange presents around a tree for my baby daughter who doesn’t even know who Santa is quite yet. Anyway, here’s a short list of the reads that made my 2019 delightful and fun. I firmly believe that we are absolutely, completely, one hundred percent…
Hey, let me tell you what I’m trying to do at this very moment: prep for my author marketing meeting, watch videos for learning how to write a TV treatment, upload all the business cards of people I met at a professional conference this weekend, write an article about a conference I attended two weeks ago, photoshop my author photos, upload guest author interviews and write this piece. Oh, and…
Well, I’m glad Halloween is over. Now it’s time for more prosaic fears. Myself. Yup, it’s that time of year again, when my book edits were submitted (“This is the last time you can make substantive changes,” GULP) and I am in that twiddling thumb space. I’ve been in this space before — the first time I handed in my draft in June — but after that I collapsed. I…
Do you want to know my number one writing fear? Writing this blog entry. Ha, ha. I’m mostly kidding. I have panic disorder, so “confronting my fears” is something I do with a lot of preparation and self-care. However, I feel like I might share my number one writing fear with pretty much every debut author who ever waltzed on to the scene, so I don’t feel alone in this….
To paraphrase Nick Hornby, My desert-island, top-five most memorable books in chronological order: 1. Escape to Witch Mountain Tony and Tia were different. (Didn’t we all feel that way as kids?) They could both read minds and had telekenisis – they could move objects with their minds. That was a talent I tried to practice as I suffered silently at the dinner table. Instead of paying attention to what was…
