Every story my 6-year-old daughter tells us starts with this line: “Once upon a time…” I’m not sure if I’m responsible for that, or if school is, or if it came from one of the shows she likes to watch, or the books we read together…but while it might just be the most recognized writing cliché there is, it does exactly what a great first line is supposed to do:…
All week long I’ve been picturing interconnecting friendship circles. Smaller ones and bigger ones, some that overlap and some that don’t, but that generally trend outwards. I think of my writing communities this way. In fact, I was thinking about this topic last week when I wrote a post on my blog — Serendipity Will Meet You Along the Way — about how we never know what might happen through…
I was about to write a whole piece on how I create characters… until I realized I just did that post a few weeks ago. My mind is clearly not working well. Instead, I will briefly wax rhapsodic about some of my favorite all-time characters… the whole cast of Harry Potter. The books, not the movies. I’m not against the movies, but I just saw Order of the Phoenix right…
I loooooooove lists!!!! I have a Franklin Planner — not an electronic organizer, but a pen-and-paper binder — and I’ve been using it for years. When I keep up with my daily lists, I’m productive and sane. When I don’t — and all too often I don’t — I’m frazzled and overwhelmed. For today’s post, however, I don’t want to write about to-do lists. I was out with friends the…
I’m so torn about the process of turning books into movies. As a former teacher, movies of books were both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because the films sometimes held interesting interpretations of the books, or really brought the characters to life in a way that resonated with how we had seen them as we read. They were a treasure trove of conversation points as we compared the…
