A friend of mine posted on Facebook this week, “Some days I just don’t feel like writing a novel.” I can relate. It’s days like these, when I am exhausted in mind, body, and spirit, that inspiration, not to mention motivation, utterly fails to make an appearance. Frustrating on days when I am due to Read More
Category: writing
End of Year Reflections
“Aside from velcro, time is the most mysterious substance in the universe. You can’t see it or touch it, yet a plumber can charge you upwards of seventy-five dollars per hour for it, without necessarily fixing anything.” ― Dave Barry So it’s that time of year again. I don’t particularly like resolutions, since I usually Read More
Reality in Historical Romance
One of the blogs I follow is Hearts Through History, which features some marvelous posts on history in general, as well as historical romance in particular. A recent post by Merry Farmer caught my eye, about historical body image. The concept of skinny, as she notes, is purely a 20th century notion, but most heroines Read More
Inspiration, Italian Style
So I spent the last two weeks in Italy. It was one of those trip-of-a-lifetime sorts of vacations, where we packed in just about every major tourist site, and quite a few minor ones. My husband is a classicist, so there was a heavy emphasis on Roman ruins–Colosseum, Forum, Villa Adriana, Pompeii, Herculaneum, etc.–but we Read More
Germinating the idea seed
When I first started writing one of the many things that made me nervous was that I would run out of things to write about. The fear that I had only one story in me made me hang on for far too long to a manuscript that should have been stuffed under the bed. Read More
Writing Contests
This post is sort of an update of a piece I wrote last year over on New Kids on the Writers Block, when I was in a contest frenzy. I’ve been in contest mode this spring as well, serving as a category coordinator and a backup judge for the Cleveland Rocks Romance Contest, and as a Read More