Happy New Year! For us Debs that means… our year is here! At last! This is both exciting and, well, terrifying. My book comes out in 105 days, and that simultaneously feels like it will never get here and like there’s still so much to do in so little time. I’m a high-functioning bundle of nerves on a good day, so I can only imagine how tightly-wound I’m likely to…
I’m writing this on day 3 of a fever, so please excuse me if it’s super loopy. I get stir crazy being quarantined for this long, but I’d hate to get anyone else sick. I love my office. It’s a tiny room at the top of the stairs that I painted navy blue just before we moved into this house. I have a bitsy green velvet sofa and a phrenology…
I have long been a hoarder of quotes. I keep files and files full of them, some organized by theme, some separated by source. I genuinely miss the days when I could show them off and use them to express my current mood in AIM away messages or in LiveJournal subject lines. This week, the Debs are sharing some of our favorite quotes about writing, books, stories, all of that….
It’s fortuitous that this topic falls here, at the end of November, as I’ve spent the past 26 days frantically drafting Book 2 of the Aven Cycle as my NaNoWriMo project (with intermittent work on two other projects at the same time). It’s also a bit unfortuitous — I’ve been so busy drafting that I haven’t had a lot of time to think about how I draft. What leaps 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…
In 2012 I lost one of my best friends to cancer. Sharon was only forty-two years old, and left behind an amazing husband and two young kids. It happened fast. In May she was healthy, driving up to Los Angeles to take me out for my birthday. By August it had metastasized to her liver and bones, and by the following March, we’d lost her. It changes you, to watch…
At the end of my MFA thesis defense, someone asked me what I wanted to do next. I’d been thinking about this question for a while, and I told the committee that I thought I might try my hand at writing for young people. After a few moments of resounding, deeply uncomfortable silence, someone told me that I should stick to poetry and literary fiction. The underlying implication, that books…
Happy Friday the 13th! And in October, too! Spoopy! This week we’re talking about creativity. Where do we find it? How do we cultivate it? How do we hang onto it? This week we’re talking about creativity. Where do we find it? How do we cultivate it? How do we hang onto it? I’m having a rough week, y’all. For the last year and a half or so I’ve been…
Note: This week we’re talking about the long and arduous process of how we got our agents. I mean, maybe it’s not arduous for everyone, but damned if I didn’t learn a thing or two about patience along the way. I like statistics. When I was in the process of looking for representation, it felt like all the stories I heard were people who’d queried a handful of agents and…
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…
