Liebster Award
What is The Liebster Award? The Liebster Award is a tag which helps new bloggers get noticed, connect with each other and make relationships in the blogging community. I am not a “new blogger,” but I am, nonetheless, honored to be given the award by my friend Roy A. Ackerman, Ph.D, E.A., whose middle initial […]
Ice and Dispassion
So, I bought the book. Yes, that book. I normally refuse to follow the crowd when it comes to “the most talked-about bestseller on the planet right now,” but when my husband asked me, over dinner, if I’d pre-ordered the book, I realized that it fit in nicely with two of my 2018 goals for […]
donald trump, featured, fire and fury, first amendment, free speech, potus, twitter
Never, Ever, Ask
Never, ever ask a writer, “How much worse could it be?” Because we can always imagine something… 2018 got off to a happy, auspicious start, for me, personally – I got to spend the holidays with family in Dallas. Even frigid temps were mostly cause for mirth; how often can you say it’s colder in […]
2018, cervical, DDD, degenerative disc disease, disc replacement surgery, featured
Resolutions 2018
I considered going back to my former, iron-clad resolution: “Make no stupid resolutions you have no intention of keeping.” My commitment – my resolve – has faltered, gradually, the last few years, and that’s one resolution I always managed to keep, till that day a few years ago when I decided to tempt fate and […]
Blogging & Social Media Tips, Humor
Fresh Perspectives Delivered FREE to the First 100 Subscribers! Deal Ends at Midnight!
You’ve heard that “nothing good happens after midnight.” Are you willing to risk it? Are you ready to be plunged into email darkness, unable to read A Fresh Perspective without a cheap flashlight? Don’t worry, I have no plans – now or ever – to turn off the lights here or to charge you to […]
Why I Left and Where I Am
She’s Gone! She’s Just Disappeared! I’m still alive. I’m still right here. Yes, I left Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram in a bit of a hurry. I’m sorry for that – there’s no nice way to quietly deactivate an account but leave a single post containing a forwarding address, or a “Gone Fishing” notice. It hasn’t […]
When Life Hands You Lemons… (#NaNoWriMo2017)
Our Story So Far… If you’re just arriving, you may want to start with the first chapter. Here is a table of contents: Chapter Six Beau was waiting for me in the school’s lobby. High school teachers don’t have offices, and the lobby at nine o’clock in the morning was more private than the teachers’ […]
Rumor Mill (#NaNoWriMo2017)
Our Story So Far… If you’re just arriving, you may want to start with the first chapter. Here is a table of contents: Chapter Four The sun streaming through the curtains made my head throb. “Never drink wine on a Tuesday night,” I muttered, rolling out of bed and blindly feeling my way to the […]
featured, nanonovel17, nanowrimo, nanowrimo17, nanowrimo2017
Bats in the Belfry (#NaNoWriMo2017)
Our Story So Far… If you’re just arriving, you may want to start with the first chapter. Here is a table of contents: Chapter Three Stewart opened a bottle of Prosecco, filled both our glasses to the rim with golden bubbles, then lifted his in a gesture of salutation. “To best friends,” he said. “Now […]
featured, nanonovel17, nanowrimo, nanowrimo17, nanowrimo2017
Ridiculously Easy (#NaNoWriMo2017)
Our Story So Far… If you’re just arriving, you may want to start with the first chapter. Here is a table of contents: Chapter Two I drove up the winding road to my little rustic bungalow in Juniper Woods. The windows were aglow with a warm, amber light. A shadow crossed behind the sheer curtain. […]
featured, nanonovel, nanonovel17, nanowrimo, nanowrimo17, nanowrimo2017
The Road to Hell (#NaNoWriMo2017)
Chapter One Joe Krebs and I stared at one another like two small dogs issuing a half-hearted challenge over an old ham bone buried too long in the mud. Neither of us could win, but it was a way to pass the time. I caught Scotty DeLuca cutting his eyes over at the clock, as […]
featured, nanonovel17, nanowrimo, nanowrimo17, nanowrimo2017, road to hell
Countdown to NaNoWriMo!
Some of you have already started writing, but for those of us in the United States – where NaNoWriMo got its “Na” – we’re still a good 45 minutes to launch. Getting excited? For me, it’s tradition to stay up till midnight an write, at the very least, “In the beginning…” More can wait until […]
Reasons NOT to Start Bullet Journaling
Between the blog and Google Calendar and my stash of $0.99 purple-covered composition books from Wal-Mart, I was doing just fine keeping up with the chronicles of daily life, various appointments, and the to-do list. I didn’t need a Bullet Journal. I didn’t want a Bullet Journal. I’d resisted the siren call to even return […]
bujo, bullet journal, bulletjournal, featured, humor, writebravely
Serial Blogger
Once you’ve considered the pros and cons of blogging your NaNoWriMo novel – or, anything, really – and have decided to go for it, how do you tie all the chapters or related posts together on the blog? Building a table of contents is a bit tedious, and requires extensive cross-linking and updates to be really reader-friendly.
Should I Blog the Novel-in-Progress? #NaNoWriMo #WriteBravely
There are good reasons to blog the novel during #NaNoWriMo, and there are excellent reasons not to. It’s entirely up to you, but you need to consider a few things before you commit to a decision: Copyright, Commitment, and Willingness to Fail.
Gnome’s-Eye View of My Herb Garden
Wow, speaking of a fresh perspective! A few weeks ago, my husband recycled the base of an old, rusted basketball hoop into a container garden for me. It wasn’t that I asked him to – I think he realized, finally, that showing me the second copperhead snake he found outside our door had deterred me […]
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Here, There Be Dragons – Plot Dragons!
My fellow Write Triber, Vinodini Iyer wrote, in a comment on my Plot Bunnies, Ninjas, and Tales of Derring-Do, “My plot bunnies sometimes start dragging a bit and I need to turn them into plot dragons to make worth a read.” Naturally, my plot dragons wanted to meet her plot dragons! Forever Friends My first plot dragon […]
Plot Bunnies, Ninjas, and Tales of Derring-Do
Have I convinced you to throw yourself into the fray? To sharpen the nib on your fountain pen, dip it into the purple ink, and write perspicacious prose in that delightfully madcap literary adventure known as NaNoWriMo? I hope so! Now, if you’re already addicted to writing, you know the drill. But if you’re still […]
action, chekhov's gun, featured, fiction, nanowrimo, plot bunny, plot ninja
NaNoWriMo Math
I remember thinking I’d never be able to break the 6,000 word barrier, let alone write 50,000 words during my first NaNoWriMo. I had something to prove, that first year – to myself. “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned […]
October, or “NaNoWriMo Prep Month”
Some of us don’t like to color inside the lines, and November isn’t the time to start. At its core, National Novel Writing Month, or “NaNoWriMo,” is about writing fast enough to drown out the sound of the inner critic in the frantic clacking of fingernails on a keyboard. 50,000 words in 30 days, or […]
Always Look for the Helpers
I’m proud to live in Houston, Texas, and have never been more proud than now, in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. For over a week, the world watched images of the devastating Category 4 hurricane and the slow, drenching rains of “Biblical proportions” that engulfed our part of the state, covering large parts of it […]
Struggling to Find the Writer’s Voice
Struggling to “find your voice“ as a writer? How can it be that you’ve lost it? It’s like looking for the car keys clutched in your hand. What IS Voice? It’s helpful to define what “voice” is and what it isn’t. Jon Jorgenson wrote, “The artistic voice is a longing to create what does not yet exist, […]
Technologically Challenged and Chuffed!
Technologically Challenged Ever have one of those weeks when everything with electronic, electrical, or mechanical parts would do well to grow legs and run from you? We never even lost power during Hurricane Harvey, but in the few weeks since, the DSL modem fried itself (I didn’t even look at it funny, I swear!) and […]
chuffed, featured, hard drive replacement, humor, technology
Both Sides, All Sides, Your Side, My Side
Both sides, all sides, your side, my side. Can’t we all just try to see things from others’ point of view, and try to get along? Are we really hardwired to see the world as “us vs. them”? Do we need a common enemy to fight, lest we fight among ourselves? Both Sides Do It […]
all sides, bigotry, featured, forgiveness, resist, social conflict
I Can See Clearly Now
Eye health is something many of us simply take for granted. Sure, we may need glasses to see, but most of us don’t have serious issues with the health of our eyes. If that changes suddenly, it can be terrifying. Just over two years ago, I woke up with a sharp pain, in the middle […]
dry eye, eye, eye care, eye health, featured, rce, recurrent corneal erosions
Like a Reservoir
I’ve said it before: I don’t believe in writer’s block. The mind is a reservoir. Sometimes, it runs too dry and low on fresh ideas, too sluggish and stagnant to be worth lifting the heft of a pen and dipping it into the inkwell. At other times, it is overflowing – a jumble of sparkling […]
featured, language, reservoir, silence, writer's block, writers, writing
Good in a Crisis
I’ve always been good in a crisis. I fall apart weeks, months, sometimes years later. I fall apart when the sun is shining and all memory of the disaster has faded to a a transparent overlay with soft edges. The worse the disaster, the longer it takes – the more completely inappropriate the timing. But […]
Fresh Start, Fresh Perspective
It began with a change of venue, from HostGator to PeoplesHost. After nearly a decade, it was time for a fresh start. Rather than blow away the old blog, I decided to start with a new one. This gave me the opportunity to experiment with a fresh look, fresh content, fresh thoughts, and a fresh […]
