10 Confessions of this writer: I take Wellbutrin, Xanax, and a couple glasses of wine on the daily. Writing makes me super hungry. I write, pace, snack, and repeat. I can’t deal with men on airplanes wearing tank tops. This is not writing related, but it’s true. Today I feel strongly that I like Ikea way better than I like my writing. Way better. I’m having a really difficult time with…
During a catastrophically bad job interview, Kate, the main character in Small Admissions says that, in her mind, the year begins in September — not in January. It’s one of the few reasonable (as in not completely crazy) statements she makes as she’s trying to land a job in a school. I feel the same way. For me, September has always meant the beginning of a new year. All these…
When I was younger, I always envisioned I’d go to a job from 8 to 5, but once I was home for the evening or weekend, I’d be in non-work mode. I’d have endless hours to fill with frivolity. Oh, how wrong I was. Writing is the dust of career paths. It is always there, always waiting for you to work on it. And even when you spend hours hammering…
Writing a novel is an odd experience. You create a core plot, then act it out by invented characters, kind of like a puppet show except it’s all in your head. To really bring it to life, you need to fill it in with a million little details. I do invent a good many of those details, usually when I want it to serve a purpose, like a character collecting cheesy…
There are some topics on which I have no right to blog: Raising twins (don’t have ’em), Skydiving (won’t do it), Sword-Swallowing (ow)… Yet even considering all those, probably the topic on which I have the least right to blog is Balance, and I mean that in every sense of the word. I will fall over if I try to do tree pose, I’m too impatient to find that perfect…
Here are a few things I know about change… Pocket Change: My wallet will be absolutely bursting with pocket change… until I’m in dire need of coins to feed the parking meter. Change of Clothes: An absolute necessity when I travel out of town for a wedding, in case the dress I fully intended to wear suddenly no longer fits (clearly it must have shrunk…). Change of Scenery: Moving my…
I went to film school in Tallahassee, Florida. Not exactly a hotbed of film industry activity. In fact, the film school was pretty self-aware about that. In order to give us a few months’ jump on all of the other matriculating film school students across the country, they assigned us an additional summer’s-worth of classes and kicked us out the door in December of what would be our senior year….
Deb News: The Debs were quoted in this week’s San Francisco Chronicle. You can read all about it here. Deb Jess is beyond excited to announce that Driving Sideways has just gone into a FOURTH printing! Thanks so much to everyone who picked up a copy to help her reach that milestone! And thanks to the lovely women across the pond at Trashionista for the wonderful review of Driving Sideways…
Day Six Dear Mom, I am as much “at one” with nature as I ever hope to be. More, actually. Tomorrow we’ll be back near the Outward Bound cabin/office and I’m sure when I call to explain everything you’ll agree I should come home. You wanted me to do this because the boys both did it but they stayed in CABINS and besides, they both probably loved being smelly and…
Are the Debs rich with great friends to guest blog, or what? This Wednesday, Lisa Daily is cutting in to dance in place of Deb Jennifer. Lisa is the author of the bestselling dating book Stop Getting Dumped! (Penguin Putnam) and does a weekly dating guest spot on Lifetime Radio. She is also a syndicated dating columnist whose hilarious advice column appears on approximately 150 dating websites, and in college newspapers across the…
