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Winter Break road trip 1: Flagstaff to Phoenix to White Sands
It’s Winter Break for most of us academics in the US. Work is quiet, lots of holidays, so it’s the perfect time to: Get caught up on work. Get lots of writing done. Catch up on house chores, maybe clean some closets. Cook and freeze some meals for next semester. Say to hell with responsibilities and take a road trip! Guess which option the hubs and I chose? I’m writing this on Sunday morning from an old motel in the booming metropolis of Carrizozo, New Mexico (population 996 according to this Wikipedia article). I don’t have any pictures of Carrizozo yet, because we skidded into town (almost literally) in the…
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Christmas past–with Krylon
Note: A version of this piece first appeared on my garden blog three years ago. I’ve mostly retired that blog to focus on this one, but I hope to share a few pieces from it—and from other past blogs—on here from time to time. I’m busy preparing for a long-awaited holiday road trip, so this seems like a good time to recycle something from the past. I hope you enjoy it. Christmas is one of those times when past and present converge in a strange time warp. Memories haunt this time of year, resurrected by the familiar sights, sounds, and scents of Christmas: happy memories we try to recreate for…
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Lessons from #NaNoWriMo
So I managed to write 50,000 words in November. See that shiny NaNoWriMo winner’s badge? Yeah, I earned that. Yeah. I did. Me. Winner. [thumps chest] I won NaNo once previously, in 2014 when I was drafting a novel called Vanishing, Inc. that still isn’t quite done yet because I’ve been revising it since 2015. sigh Anyway, I was proud of myself then, but this NaNo feels even more satisfying, because it was so much harder. Some days it felt like I was doing nothing more than spewing verbal vomit all over my screen, solely because I wanted to get those damn 50,000 words (Which I did. Me. Winner. Thumps…
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Living the Dream
The December question for the Insecure Writers Support Group Blog Hop is: Let’s play a game. Imagine. Role-play. How would you describe your future writer self, your life and what it looks and feels like if you were living the dream? Or if you are already there, what does it look and feel like? Tell the rest of us. What would you change or improve? I imagine this a lot. Usually when I should be writing. While other middle-aged straight women fantasize about Brad Pitt or The Rock and a bathtub full of Jell-O, I daydream about hitting it big as a writer. Book tours! Interviews! Swanky cocktail parties!…
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External validation (or, I won, I won, I won!)
For several weeks, I’ve mulled over how to share the biggest announcement in my writing career to date (translation: I’ve been procrastinating as usual). Do I write some important-sounding essay on how you should put yourself and your writing out there, because doing so might just pay off? Should I announce it like a press release, making sure to include the phrase, “award-winning author” at least twice? Should I dip my head demurely and modestly thank everyone from God to my fourth-grade teacher the way actors do at the Oscars? Nah. I’m going to squee all over this dang post like a thirteen-year-old with her first boyfriend. I won. I…
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10 Tips for Improving Your Academic Writing
Thanks to Louis at Thematically Meandering: Learning to Write for the opportunity to write a guest post. Head on over there to to read my post, 10 Tips for Improving Your Academic Writing, and while you’re there, check out some of Louis’ great work.
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#NaNoInspo: Write Badly
My November post for the Insecure Writers Support Group Blog Hop is all about writing badly. Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. — Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird. A quick Google search on “Anne Lamott shitty first draft,” reveals that lots of bloggers have written about this quote and the importance of writing badly. Now I could do the responsible thing, and find another topic, or I could just carry on anyway, because I really want to write about writing badly.…
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#nanoprep: Creating characters
I’m up to my eyeballs in #nanoprep, otherwise known as preparing for NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo is a worldwide phenomenon in which hundreds of thousands of people commit to writing 50,000 words in November. Much caffeine is consumed, much angst ensues, and many fingers ache from pounding on many keyboards. I’ve done NaNo a few times and “won” (wrote 50K words) the first time, in 2014. This is the first time since then that I’ve started a brand-new novel for NaNo. I have an outline done, and now I’m working on character sketches. One of the lessons I learned from writing my first novel…
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Creating is self-care
Sometimes life kicks you in the butt. Then it kicks you when you’re down. Then it curb-stomps you into a bloody pulp and leaves you twitching in the gutter. My mother passed away Saturday morning. The woman who birthed me, loved me, taught me, corrected me, protected me, nurtured me, encouraged me. That woman is gone. Her passing was not sudden. It was not unexpected. Dementia had stolen most of who she was, so her death wasn’t even a tragedy. It was a mercy. But it hurts like hell. That sucks, you say, but first Wednesday is supposed to be the day we IWSG types write words of encouragement to…
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Learn to Write Fiction 1: Get Started
I explained in my last post why I didn’t start writing fiction till my late 40s. Sometimes I think my life’s motto should be, Better Late than Never. Anyway, once I decided to give this whole making-up-stories thing a try, I had to figure out how to get started. Just put some words on the page? Well, OK, but as I said in my last post, creative writing is a craft. And crafts have to be learned. So, how does one learn to write a novel? Especially if one has a day job and doesn’t want to spend a couple of years and many thousands of dollars earning an MFA?…
Janet Alcorn
Suspense | Horror | Romance
