I blog regularly at the GIRLFRIENDS BOOK CLUB Blog. Here are some of my favorite posts:
The Funny Thing About Rejection…
Rejection is the subject of the week here at Girlfriends. It’s something every writer fears, ranking right up there with the fear of our fingers suddenly falling off for no apparent reason. We deal with rejection all the time: rejection from agents who don’t like our story (because they’re afraid of rejection from publishers); rejection from publishers who say it’ll never sell (because they’re afraid of rejection from reviewers and readers); rejection from reviewers – whether it’s the New York Times or just a reader on Amazon.com (they really aren’t afraid of anything – which kind of sucks); & rejection from readers who don’t like a new direction we’ve taken or that we killed off a beloved character (because they feel rejected by us).
My Ideas – And No, They Don’t Come From Drinking Binges
Years ago, at a Romance Writers of America conference, a best-selling author (I forgot who – but then sometimes I forget my middle name…) said, “Where do I get my ideas? If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you, because then you’d go there and get them.”
This is probably the number one, most asked question for authors at speaking events and signings (outside of ‘where’s the bathroom?‘). I guess it’s a totally natural question. But it is a frustrating one to answer. I’m not sure any author can tell you. It’s not like a real place, “I get all my ideas from Saskatchewan,” or “I get all my ideas at the Dollar Store.”
Leslie Langtry Has Presbyterian..No, Presbyhopetia…No, Needs Bifocals…
I’m getting old.
How do I know this? Because I had to get bifocals. Sigh.
I didn’t want to. But things were getting a little (ok, a LOT) blurry around the edges and I realized I couldn’t keep looking over my glasses at the computer (mainly because it hurt). Nor could I reach far enough away to hit the keyboard and see the screen clearly. And I have the arms of an orangutan. Seriously, my ballet teacher in college said, ‘you have unusually long arms for a woman’ and I didn’t punch him in the face – not even once.
Writing Retreat!!!
By the time you read this, I’ll be in a car, my daughter and I will be driving 8 hours from home in Illinois to northwest Michigan. My darling teenager goes to Music Camp every year for a one-week institute. I go and spend the whole week in a hotel nearby (requested by the kid in case she get’s homesick/breaks a leg/just needs to know I’m 20 minutes away) for a self-imposed writing retreat.
And I can’t wait. Just me and my laptop in a hotel room, writing, for a whole week. Without the usual interruptions: