My sister was five years older than me, and music (and books) were her refuge. Because she tended to hang out with people a bit older than her, the music she listened to was definitely well ahead of what I bought as a kid. One day on her bedroom floor was an album with a […]
Taking One Last Leap
In one hour and forty-nine minutes, it will be 2020 in North Texas. But I’ve mentioned before that I consider September my new year. And so, this entry is not a recap of the year…nor is it a list of resolutions and goals I wish to accomplish in 2020. At the moment, with the exception […]
The Ambition Machine
[This got a bit long…] We live in a world where so many of us are told we can become anything we want to be. From a young age, we’re told if we simply work hard, all our dreams will come true. (And the sharper side of that message: if they don’t, it’s all your […]
Ten Years
Ten years ago… I was a little more than three months shy of being laid off from my first real technical writing job [the week before Christmas]. I was slowly coming out of a depression that almost ended the things most important to me — including me. I was working on the most “me” novel […]
The September Silence – 2019
It’s that time of the year when I step away from all social media for a month. A friend calls it the September Silence, which is now what I call it. September is a month kicking off several things I look forward to: The tenth anniversary of The Juggling Writer. (It’s funny to me that […]
The Kind Ones
There’s a certain pain in wanting to do the thing you love more than you’re able to do because life comes with certain demands. Technical writing is not the writing I want to do, but it is the writing that pays the bills. I am not so naive to think that writing fiction full time […]
What Is Literary Fiction
In the weeks following a short story’s release on my fiction podcast, Not About Lumberjacks, I record a short behind-the-scenes audio essay about the story. Sometimes I focus on the mechanics of the story or what went into recording, while other times, I focus on something thematic surrounding the story. Most recently, I spent six […]
Writing 1,000 Words a Day
I am that writer who mostly doesn’t track things. Beginning last August, I did begin marking days I wrote (or didn’t write) on a calendar, but there is no rule for what constitutes a good day of writing, other than if I felt I did enough to earn a green X on the calendar instead […]
Paterson Movie
Most movies about writers end with the kind of victory movies have conditioned us to expect: publication and awards…the writer we watched grow getting everything in life many believe comes to writers when they finally decide to publish. (As though it were that easy.) Paterson is not that movie — and because of that, I […]
May 2019 Writing Recap
May was a month for some big changes. I not only started a new job on May 1, but it was also the day I started working on the new book. The new book is the second book in a three-book series about a girl born in a circus in 1923 — and her rise […]
Seventh Annual Writing Retreat
On May 19, a friend and I headed to East Texas for the seventh annual writing retreat. It was a return to the location of year five’s retreat: Daingerfield State Park. Upon arrival, we realized Texas State Parks no longer provide bedding and towels, so…being in the middle of nowhere meant a bit of a […]
The View Up There
We didn’t mean to go hiking Monday morning, but that’s what we did. Me, without water, and my friend Deacon with his Iron Man/Captain America mug full of coffee. We meant to just walk down to the lake near the cabin we rented for the annual writing retreat. (Full report on the retreat coming soon…) […]
Retreating to Daingerfield State Park
It’s spring in Texas. That means allergies and storms are common and oppressive heat is right around the corner… Waiting… (With a hot knife…) But it also means it’s time for the annual writing retreat! (Woohoo!!!) Daingerfield State Park This is not the first retreat at Daingerfield State Park. And I suspect it won’t be […]
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