After just posting on how overjoyed I was to find a great new writing place – Darrin’s Coffee Company in Zionsville, Indiana – I arrived there last week with my computer and a stack of books to be met with a sign: CLOSED. Closed? How could my writing place be closed? Another Darrin’s customer arrived… [Read More]
Work in Progress #22 for My Emily Post Biography: Making Space for a Large Thought
January 4, 2016 By
When you’re writing a longer book, it moves forward in layers. On the surface, one word follows another and a sentence happens; one sentence follows another and a paragraph happens; one paragraph follows another and a chapter happens. Underneath the words and sentences and paragraphs, themes also have to be moving forward and these can… [Read More]
Work in Progress #20: Are You Finished Yet With Your Emily Post Biography?
July 30, 2015 By
“Are you finished with that book you’re working on yet?” It’s a question I get asked over and over again. I suspect that, lurking behind that question are other unspoken ones, like “Do you perhaps have procrastination issues?” or “Are you really writing a book or just putting us all on?” It’s hard to explain… [Read More]
Work in Progress #19: Warming Things Up For My Emily Post Biography
July 21, 2015 By
As I begin chapter 11 of my Emily Post biography and survey the material I have to work with, it all looks a little cold to me. It’s the 1930s, and the pinnacle moment of Emily’s life (the publication of her etiquette book) took place in the last chapter. Now I have to figure out… [Read More]
Work in Progress #18: The Moving Light at the End of the Tunnel
July 6, 2015 By
I am three quarters of the way through my Emily Post biography…maybe (dare I hope it???) even further. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Except for the fact that writing a longer piece always goes slower and slower the further I proceed because I realize with every sentence I write… [Read More]
Work in Progress #17: A Quote File
June 1, 2015 By
I keep a quote file on my desktop where I can record interesting tidbits from the things I read. I’ve developed a list of categories to file them under so that I can access them when a particular subject comes up in a piece I might be working on: “aging,” “being/becoming,” “freedom,” “history-writing,” “self,” “superficiality,”… [Read More]
Leave the Door Open! – 40 Percent of 6-11 Year Olds Wish Their Parents Hadn’t Stopped Reading to Them
April 13, 2015 By
My husband and I have four children – all now adults. Reading to them was always a treat for me and watching each of them in turn grow “too old to be read to” was an agony. When my younger two boys, who shared a room and slept in twin beds side by side, were… [Read More]
Moaning and Groaning
March 12, 2015 By
I’ve done more moaning and groaning than writing since last November. Just after Thanksgiving of 2014, my husband and I moved out of our Richmond, Indiana house (where we’d lived for twenty-three years) to a new much smaller home in Indianapolis. The boxes and the upheaval and the not-knowing-where-anything-is pushed my writing time off the… [Read More]
Writing and Talking
July 22, 2014 By
Awhile back, I wrote a blog (“I Don’t Talk – I Just Write”) about how terrified I was when people discovered I was a published writer and started asking me to do talks. Today I can tell you that not only did I overcome that initial fear, but the talks I do for various audiences… [Read More]
Work in Progress #15: The Joy of a Legal Pad
May 6, 2014 By
There’s a time in my writing process when I have been sweating and agonizing and re-thinking how to proceed with a chapter and am terrified to actually start writing it. The amount of material I have to include seems overwhelming, I need to be sure to include enough warm, human parts in the midst of… [Read More]