Taking The Write Risks

The start of the New Year has me thinking about endings, beginnings, and the paths we take to lead us from one chapter to the next. How did you choose your direction? How did you decide to be a botanist, a nurse, or a stay-at-home Dad? For some, life’s course comes naturally–as for those who…

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Get Naked With Yourself

A singular idea occurred to me last week, coming hard on the heels of the Jewish holiday of repentance and new resolutions: what would happen if I made a list of all I’d like to change in my life during the coming year? Many of us create resolutions for the start of a fresh year–whether…

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Stripping Down

It’s October 11th and Yom Kippur is almost here. I’m writing this just about one week before you will be reading it. I’m at my kitchen table, typing, thinking, wondering–maybe making a little prayer. It’s three o’clock, and in a few hours, at sundown, millions of Jewish men, women and children all around the world will…

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Waking Up To Suicide

Did you know that September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month? This recognition of suicide in our society is now highlighted every year at this time. Many federal departments, national foundations, and small support groups are attempting to increase public awareness about our country’s plague of self-inflicted death–its precursors, warning signs, and possible interventions. This…

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Magical Scraps Of Inspiration

“What do you think about this?” my mother asks, handing over a sheet of manila paper, its lines of type covered with the markings of a black, felt-tip pen. “I rewrote it again this morning.” I’ve just come home from junior high school and we’re sitting her study. She’s been working on this poem all…

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Satisfaction and Bliss

This week I am rejoicing! I have finally completed the first start-to-finish draft of my novel. Daydreams In The Dark has a beginning, a middle and an end–the bones of plot, character and theme are in place, the skin of the story drawn tight. Only the meaty details need to be shaped and added. The pages are…

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Tea For Two

Recently, I was asked to do a Q & A for another writer’s blog, and one of the questions was very thought-provoking. “If there was one person, dead or alive, that you could spend an afternoon with, who would it be and why?” I considered my answer with care. All of my initial responses seemed…

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Guilty Pleasures

So, it’s Thursday at 5:00 in the morning and I’m speeding along at eighty miles an hour, in the pitch black, to a burg called Vallejo, which is about an hour and a half from my house. I’m keeping watch in my rear view mirror for “CHIPies,” (California Highway Patrol), who will pull me over…

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The Winter of My Brain

Out of hibernation we emerge! The clocks have sprung forward, the spring equinox has passed, the groundhog failed to see his shadow last month and so predicted an early new season. Boy, am I glad to hear it, as here at our home on the top of a small mountain, we had a direct lightning…

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