After working on nearly a dozen picture books over the last year I want to go back into a longer story. I dusted off one I had a good start to (I’ve talked about before) and dove in. While I know first drafts are not worth sharing I couldn’t help myself and let a few read […]
Sheep are cute and fluffy. They are very useful in many ways, which is why farmers have raised them for thousands of years. But sheep aren’t something we should aspire to be. Yet, many writers, especially new writers, struggle with many temptations. Temptations of becoming sheep. Here are 3 things to avoid as a new (or […]
I’ve been compiling a book full of best quotes for years. When I find one I add it to the pile. I’ve noticed a trend of having quite a few from books from the middle grade reading level. Here they are and I hope you have as much joy in them as I do. “The […]
Working from home is amazing, but like any other job, it has its own unique challenges. Before I started this journey a few months ago, all I wanted to do was spend more time at home. I loved my coworkers, but I was physically exhausted and mentally drained most of the time from working 50-60 […]
I had admiral goals when I stated to my critique partner that I wanted to expand my vocabulary. The issue was in execution. Read the dictionary, was the first thing we thought of. Then realized that retention of those words would be dismal. We’d have to create an exercise to make the words become organic […]
Do you ever start a story and somewhere in the middle it turns on you? Maybe you plotted an idea, but there’s a loophole and suddenly what you planned doesn’t work. Or maybe you started writing as a happy pantser, but now you’re stuck in the corner of the room you created, paintbrush in hand, […]
So it’s been a few years since I talked about upgrading our play set in the backyard. Let’s just say it’s been low on the priority totem pole. But this summer it finally happened. I didn’t follow my plans exactly from my last post but the effort has been valiant. Here’s how I transformed our […]
