Ever try making up fake book titles? They can be more interesting than titles of books actually written. Ironic. Romance (Comedy, Historical) AND TO THINK YOU WERE ALWAYS BEAUTIFUL BARKING MAD FOR JESSE HOUNDER COME DIVINE WILLIAM DITCH THE DUD, SWEETHEART EGGS, BACON, AND SONGS ABOUT MARY FIBBING FRANK GETS HURT GORGEOUS AND LOVING IT HE WAS THE ONE, YOU FOOL! I THINK MY DOG’S A FAIRY PRINCE JUST THE MAN FOR MAN-EATING KELLY KITES SHAPED LIKE HEARTS LOVING QUARTERBACK PHYLLIS MAYBE-THIS-TIME HANK (MEETS SOMEONE LIKE MOM) NO MEN LEFT FOR ETHEL BRINKER… Read more Book Title Giveaway →
It was one of my favorite expressions as a teenaged girl. I was a very odd sort of teenaged girl. I’m in anguish. After having written a detailed outline of my Ayleth/Dragon story, and come within 5,000 words of finishing it (I can write 1,000 words in an hour) I realized two things. One, it felt dull. True, the dialogue was engaging and the physical setting was rich and colorful; the plot was well-conceived and the storyline was meaningful. But it was set in a very generalized sort of fantasy… Read more Oh, Horrors! →
Dear Mr. Paolini, it was so good to see you last night. I do mean ‘see’ and little more, because I stood by the corner of a bookshelf and gazed at you for about a minute and then left. However, since you are the best-known person I’ve ever been within yards of, I felt it was an unevent singular enough to merit this letter. Indulge in no regret at this near miss. Our not having met, ever, saves you the necessity to make perfunctory apologies about not remembering me. The story is this: after hearing you on the radio… Read more Dear Mr. Christopher Paolini – About Last Night →
One of the informative and sometimes hilarious aspects of writing on WordPress is that you get to see how people stumbled on your blog. I get a lot of search-engine hits from people (no clue who they are) looking for tips on how to get their toddlers to eat well – apparently my veggie post is racking up some hits. I also get quite a few on learning to write, although I’m sad to see that not all of them are looking for what I have said. Too bad I couldn’t… Read more Google Searches that Brought Me Readers – Mean Poems to say to Enemies →
Even though my own education was self-directed and patchy, I do have very pretty ideas about how people learn to write. I am presently taking a distance writing class and I had a course or two at college. What I find is that those kinds of sources have a limited but very important function. Their limitation is that they will give you fairly generalized instruction, but the benefit is that someone is going to see what you write and point out exactly where you deviate from that instruction. (Hopefully you gain the ability to… Read more How We Learn How To Write →
Slow Literature 