Writing

21 July 2011 Writer House

Jul 22, 2011

Thanks to Candace I not only have a membership to Writer House but I also had time today to write there during open hours. Thank you!!

26 June 2011 Critique Group Meeting at Trailside

Jun 27, 2011

Sam and AC got home from their first Parent-Child football class at 7:30 and regaled me with stories of games and goals and grass over dinner. So it was quite late when we made it out the door for our evening stroll around the neighborhood. There were the usual frogs (AC didn’t catch any tonight) and the usual …

19 March 2011 Virginia Festival of the Book

Mar 20, 2011

I attended a couple of sessions on children’s book publishing at the awesome (and free!) Virginia Festival of the Book today.

1 September 2010 Dear Writer

Sep 1, 2010

Another “Dear Writer” rejection letter came today. They had the submission for just two weeks! Gotta admire their efficiency.

17 August 2010 2CV

Aug 17, 2010

I’ll never forget the first time I saw one of these duck-like cars in France in the late 80s. I thought it was a VW Beetle gone very, very wrong. Turns out that the two cars were developed around the same time, just before WWII broke out. I learned this recently while researching a short non-fiction piece I’m writing …

19 July 2010 Not Suited to Our Present Needs

Jul 19, 2010

Fourth rejection letter this year. First rejection for this particular piece (a poem). I take some comfort that they didn’t check a box that says, “What were you thinking?”

The Middle of Nowhere

Dec 22, 2009

Not where we’re located at the moment, thankfully, though AC might be feeling that way as he’s right this minute spending the day at SFO waiting to catch a red-eye to the east coast, after his original flight got canceled because of the nor’easter that slammed us over the weekend. (Sam and I made it to PA just fine …

Today’s Lunch Special

Aug 9, 2009

Last night at the peer group critique event, the moderator gave us these guidelines for giving feedback to authors. He called it “the sandwich”: You start with the bread–say what you liked about the work. Keep it positive. Springy and moist, not too chewy. Then comes the meat–talk about what’s not working. But please …

Pippi Longstocking or My First Writers Conference

Aug 8, 2009

I used to go to academic conferences all the time. Two or three a year. I always wore the same professional clothing. In black. Because that’s what French scholars do. They wear black. Sometimes with a jaunty little scarf around the neck for color. Today I wore thigh-high red and black stripey socks with clunky black …