Someone came up to me the other day and said, “I didn’t know you were an author!” I smiled and said, “Yes, I am.” Whenever someone says something like this to me, I pause and remember I’m living my dream. This crazy, challenging, some-days-I’m-not-sure-I can-do-it career? It’s my childhood dream come true. And sometimes, I forget it all started because …
In Others’ Words: Fail Forward
I like it when successful people talk about their failures. Take, for example, when another writer shares how many times their manuscript was rejected before they landed a contract. (The Help by Kathryn Stockett was rejected 60 times.) Or when a pro athlete shares his struggles. (6’7″ NBA pro Paul Pierce was cut from the varsity team in high school …
In Others’ Words: Live Out Loud
Whatever an artist creates, it is an echo of their life. When a reader turns the pages of one of my novels, if she listens closely, she’ll hear whispers of my life escaping from between the lines. Yes, I’ve plotted fictional characters facing obstacles that I placed in a specific order leading to “the end” of my design. But often, …
In Others’ Words: When Intelligence has Fun
As a writer, I sometimes focus on the work of it all. Writing the story synopsis. Developing the characters. Putting the fast draft down on the page, scene by scene. And then rewrite. Rewrite. Rewrite. Somewhere along the way from synopsis to rewrite-rewrite-rewrite, I forget that, at the beginning, I fell in love with the story and the characters. I …
In Others’ Words: Leap of Faith
“Mom! Don’t take his picture!” I was walking around Breckenridge, CO with my husband and 16-year-old daughter. I had one camera and my daughter had another as we captured images of the town. But my daughter whispered “Don’t!” when I stopped to photograph the painter standing near a bridge, intent on the hanging basket of multicolored flowers. How could I …