Last week I arrived at the coffeehouse and realized that I’d forgotten my glittery magic orange Clinique bag. The magic orange bag contains pens, pencils, earplugs, scissors, tape, a stapler,
Oh dear. I think today’s the day I’ve been dreading. I must kill one of my pets. Don’t call the ASPCA. I’m talking about a few paragraphs of prose here,
This morning, I once again walked into Caribou Coffee at the corner of Tremont and Zollinger, the same coffeehouse I write at nearly every day. The manager, Paul, called me
On Sunday afternoon, I continued to struggle with endnotes and color-coordinated index cards with only moderate success after spending a week setting up and refining my system. Certainly another author
How often have we heard about the lonely life of the writer penning prose alone in a garret? The image stirs fantasies of finding the perfect cabin in the woods,
Meet Frederick, my muse. I discovered him in elementary school. We read Leo Lionni’s book of the same name about the poet field mouse who observed his world and stored
The endnote process has gotten entirely out of control. (see yesterday’s post, “The Big Picture”). I have now written more than 300 endnotes and corresponding color coordinated index cards in
I spent yesterday in endnote-land. A few months ago a friend suggested I use the “endnote” function in my word processing program to create a sort of after-the-fact outline of
When I find myself “telling” the story instead of bringing the reader into the story and dramatizing it, I remind myself to slow down and make a scene. I have
I’m writing a memoir about playing golf with my father the summer before he died. In order to write effectively about what happened that year, the book requires me to
