Have you ever had all your characters in place for a scene and they just stand there? I'd like to tell you this hardly ever happens to me. Yeah. I'd like to. But there's a little technique I discovered a few years back that's great for shaking things awake. I call it the 360° View. It gives me insight into all the characters in the scene and often surprises me with information I'd never have thought of. Sometimes it even brings things together in the book that I'd been puzzling over for...
4 days ago • 1 min read
I am thrilled to announce the multi-award-winning author Sundee Frazier as our guest faculty for our 11th Annual* Full-Bodied Writing Retreat in June. Sundee T. Frazier is the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent award-winning author of six novels including Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything in It, The Other Half of My Heart and Cleo Edison Oliver: Playground Millionaire, which has been used around the country for several all-school reads. Her most recent book, Mighty Inside,...
23 days ago • 2 min read
I had a great conversation with Margaret Kellermann last week. In a wonderfully full-circle moment, she had read my essay on her "Weaving" chapter in Journal-Keeper's Alphabet, and it had brought her back to her own book. Reading her chapter again sparked a GORGEOUS poem, of which you can read the first three stanzas on Dreamwalks, Janet Lee Carey's blog. Janet interviews Margaret about journaling, her book, and two journal-keeping workshops she is doing this fall, including Unfenced Writing...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Okay, having now checked and rechecked my calendar: there really are two workshops tomorrow.😄 At 11:00 PT, my "Anti-Marketing" friend, Tanya Joy Morgan is teaching her free Panoptic Foundations masterclass, From Nothing to Ready. Then at 4:00 PT, I'm teaching The Reader by the Fire: Finding the Listener at the Heart of Your Story. And the connection between those two still holds. Tanya will give you the five things every fiction author needs to begin reaching readers even before the book is...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Well, shoot. I was so pleased with myself for discovering that I'd serendipitously created a little Sunday–Monday writing retreat that I failed to notice one rather important detail: Margaret Kellermann's Unfenced Writing is Sunday, September 20—not this Sunday. Tanya Joy Morgan's From Nothing to Ready and my Reader by the Fire are still happening Monday as scheduled. So: no beginning-of-the-week mini-retreat after all. Apparently I created that part entirely in my imagination. 😳 I'm very...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, I was looking at what's coming up and realized I've inadvertently created a writing retreat. It starts Sunday afternoon with Margaret Kellermann's Unfenced Writing, from 1:30–3:00 PT. Margaret will help us open the creative gates through journaling and writing reflections, loosening some of the fences we put around our writing. Then Monday morning, from 11:00–12:30 PT, Tanya Joy Morgan is offering a free Panoptic Foundations masterclass, From Nothing to Ready. (You may remember...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
I’ve been thinking about the Ideal Reader—a concept that comes dangerously close to the “avatar” businesses are supposed to develop for their target customer. But I want to imagine this reader so that I can tenderly hold them in my heart. Yes, that’s corny. But it’s also not something you’d do with an avatar. Avatars are for focusing your business plan; an ideal reader is—or can be—emotionally real rather than demographically real. A long time ago I wrote for an audience under which I was...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Hi! I took the Labor Day weekend to...labor. I'll be having a getaway next month, so I took advantage of stretches of time to consider how Labyrinth is evolving and how it can serve and encourage all of us. I love connect-the-threads times like this, even though do-things-one-at-a-time times are also necessary. But over the weekend I big-pictured and I like what I see. Here's what's happening for you and your writing! What's Coming Up? Ongoing Weekly Labyrinth Write-In Thursdays, 2:30-4:30...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Did I mention I was hacked? Yup. Last month. I got two texts from a fake Meta business account at 3:43 AM telling me “We think that someone may have accessed your Facebook account, so we’ve locked it to protect you.” At the same time, I got several emails purportedly from Facebook saying “We’re here to help.” An hour later I got an email telling me “Your Facebook account has been permanently disabled.” All while I slept. I think the last one was, legit, from Meta, because my account has,...
2 months ago • 2 min read