Writing Home

There comes a time in every blog's life where the blogger has to decide whether to keep it going or to abandon it. Or, in my case,...

I haven't written much in the last couple of months, what with holiday planning and cooking, and all the concentrated work that was nece...

For all my good ideas over the years, I have failed to produce more than a handful of short stories, only two or three of them published ...

I haven't written much in the last couple of weeks because I've been spending all my free time trying to create a garden (or a few ...

A chance encounter with the cult classic, "The Room," reminded me how hard it is to get fiction characters smoothly transitioned...

Lucky is the person who can write a short story while listening to the Rolling Stones or a Bach fugue. Or who, like my spouse, can write at ...

I usually write more when I am alone. That's when I need it more. I crave some kind of a dialogue, no matter what circumstance I am in. ...

“Had-i-lay, did-i-lay, had-i-lay, pood-i-lay.” These words don’t seem significant, yet nearly five million people have tuned in on youtube t...

I’ve just returned from being out of the country for two weeks. During that time, I didn’t write anything but a postcard to my mom, assuring...

I was reminded of Thomas Wolfe—specifically, Look Homeward, Angel— while reading the short story "Bible" by Tobias Wolff the other...

It just so happens that the same day I was invited to participate in yet another list exercise on Facebook (this one called “The Name Game”)...

I have a quiet morning for the first time in weeks. There are no pressing deadlines, nothing to do except a household to-do list that can be...

I normally update this blog at least once a week. So it felt funny last week when Tuesday rolled by, then Friday, and I hadn't posted an...

As a child, I never heard anyone pronounce the word “ennui.” The rural Southern people I grew up with were too busy to be bored and the mome...

In Sleeping with One Eye Open: Women Writers and the Art of Survival (which I’ve been mining for my blog of quotes about female artists ), ...

From childhood until early adulthood, everything I wrote was on paper. Journals, poems, love letters unsent—I kept them all in boxes and fi...

These are some of the responses received to the WH Call Out on how writers deal with rejection. Strangely, no men wrote back, only women, w...

(An occasional series, in which I'll talk with writers I know—or want to know—about the craft of writing.) Kim and I met when she and I ...

(This is a question for writers who have successfully published at least two pieces of writing in any type of publication.) How do you deal ...