For eight weeks now, I have been able to get up and write before 5 am. It’s been a longtime coming. Over the summer, we embarked on moving our newly two-year-old out of our room and into the room she shares with her big brother. My husband was absolutely key in this working, and now…
Category: Write
5 Months into Motherhood
Spring in Wisconsin comes quietly and gradually. Grass stretches and greens up slowly, buds extend off naked branches subtly, and then one day you look around and daffodils and snowdrops and woodland violets are suddenly dotting the ground like little yellow and white and purple fireworks. So it has been with motherhood,…
How I’m Planning My Novel: A Peak Inside a Writer’s Notebook
In theory when it comes to drafting novels, there are two types of writers. The first is the sort that sits down generally at the beginning of the story and writes the story straight through, no particular plan, just flying by the seat of his or her pants. This is why they are sometimes…
My 5 Favorite Writing Books & 5 on My To-Read List
This past weekend we drove down to Illinois again to visit two of Evan’s cousins and their wives. We swam in a lake, grilled kabobs, played board games, went to church, and then let the men go into Chicago for a Liverpool Football Club friendly match. While the boys were away cheering at the…
Foggy Beach & Writing Days: Finding Beauty on the Shore
Last Saturday Evan and I went to the sandy dunes of a Lake Michigan beach. It was our only Saturday home, sandwiched between our June in Atlanta and the next three weekends in Chicago. We had gotten the name of a great state park an hour north from friends who remembered it fondly. …
Introducing myself as a writer
One of the surprises of the last month has been answering people’s polite, “and what do you do” questions. And the answer has changed, just like my official address, from, “well, I nanny, and tutor, and blog, and I’m working on a children’s novel” to simply, “I’m a writer.” Sometimes, if I’m…