Essays

As I’ve talked about before, sleep isn’t my best friend. I feel like I throw myself at sleep sometimes and I just keep missing. In addition, my sleep needs have changed as I’ve grown older. Until I was in my fifties, I could survive on just six hours of sleep. If I got six hours […]

Way back when, before the plague, I started my Patreon with the idea that I’d be writing about all the traveling I’d be doing. I’d looked at my schedule and I was supposed to be traveling at least once a month, every month, for the following nine months. Plus, there would be additional trips after

We’re about halfway through the year. I thought I’d look at what I’ve done so far, and what my plans are for the rest of the year. My word count goal for the year is 500K. I won’t make that without a writing marathon sometime this year (10K words/10K steps per day). And I knew

If you ask a beginning writer whether or not they know how to use the return key, the answer is likely to be a scoffing, “Of course.” If you ask an advanced writer this same question, the answer is likely to be a much more somber, “I think I have it, but of course, I

One of the things that my husband and I say about publishing is that at least half of what you learned about publishing five years ago is wrong. Possibly more than half. A good percentage of what you learned about publishing in the last two to three years is also wrong now. The field of

Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a marvelous post about creative cross-training on her blog, here: https://kriswrites.com/2023/05/17/business-musings-creative-cross-training/ I wanted to take that idea and riff on it a bit. I completely agree with Kris that it’s important to cross-train your brain, as it were. Particularly if you’re a creative. My process is different than hers, though. She

Fair warning: I’m going to be talking a lot about dieting and food. Read—or don’t—with your mental health in mind. All snacking is emotional eating. I heard that on a podcast a couple of weeks ago. I’m still thinking about it, still teasing apart how true it is for me, when it is and when

I was talking with a friend last week. She was going to have to do a couple of things that were difficult a few days hence. She talked about how she was psyching herself up for it, being firm with herself about how this had to be done. I finally asked her what she was