I often wake up in the morning depressed from bad dreams. In one recurring nightmare, I leave my purse in a restaurant, on a park bench, or a bus, and when I realize what I’ve done, a sense of dread courses through my body like …
Several months ago, I scheduled a reading at the Boonville Hotel. It’s a delightful weekend retreat, and I speculated that guests at the hotel might enjoy my kind of entertainment. Three weeks before the date, I notified the newspapers in the Anderson Valley and Fort …
I’ve just come through a few days of bad writing. Or perhaps it would be better if I said a few bad days of writing. While both are true, approaching the territory of judgment is never a good idea for us writers. We all have …
Last Wednesday, I took BART into San Francisco to attend a poetry reading at Green Arcade Books on Market Street. A long-ago student and friend, Hazel White, with whom I had lost contact for years, was reading from her new book, “Vigilance is No Orchard,” …
This week, I offer you a guest post I wrote for the blog “livewritethrive,” which has generated much appreciation. Think Small to Avoid Writer’s Block
My youngest granddaughter, Poppy, has always been intensely stage shy. She was “too scared” to dance in her ballet class’s performance when she was four, then declined piano lessons because she didn’t want “the piano teacher looking at me.” And at her class’s Christmas performance …
Most of us have the wrong idea about inspiration. Popular culture tells us that inspiration is a force that strikes out of the blue, often when we least expect it, energizing us to write, paint, think, make a plan, a decision–even a phone call. And …
If you want to find out how thinking and seeing small can help you survive these trying political times, listen to my KQED Perspectives piece.
Book Promotion Part II Promoting my book feels a lot like dating, something I was never all that enthusiastic about. In truth, my knowledge of dating comes mostly from friends and clients. And these days, it often involves the Internet. However, whether you meet potential …
Since I am spending a great deal of my time these days working toward promoting my new book, I thought I should tell other writers about my successes and failures. Promotion seems to be a topic that gets a great deal of attention, from writers …