I listened with great interest to an NPR radio show recently called ‘The Shallows’: This Is Your Brain Online. I highly recommend the 7-minute program, as the author of The Shallows, Nicholas Carr, warns us of something I think we all need to hear. As much as we’re online–for research, for platform building, for visiting [...]

I know Kathleen and Therese meant well when they asked me to offer my best writing advice, but I gotta tell you, the idea that I could presume to do so after being here less than three months? With the pedigree of you folks? Oy. The very concept made me break out in hives. Fortunately, [...]

Last month, I finished my new book, How To Bake A Perfect Life, and sent it off to my editor and agent, who are both speedy readers. By the time I polished up a couple of talks for a conference and returned home, they had turned it around, and I plunged into revisions. There’s a [...]

Therese blogged about ways to jumpstart your creativity. The subject has been on my mind a lot, because I’ve spent the past month overhauling my office. It’s a great, if ordinary, space–a bedroom upstairs overlooking the street and a view of Pikes Peak and the entire Front Range, which changes daily with light and weather [...]

A good many of you will be writing madly for NaNoMo this month, trying to finish a book in 30 days. How will you stay healthy during this time? As a veteran of numerous NaNoMo’s (otherwise known as the deadline blitz), I have a few suggestions.

I’m going to foray into Therese’s area of expertise, which is health, just for today.  Lately I’ve been chained to my computer for long patches of time as I try to finish a project, and my back has been on fire, and I feel like an old wonton folding in on itself. In desperation, I [...]

That is a mold of a butt. Probably a nicer butt than mine, but a butt just the same. I have a similar imprint on my chair after this past week. See, I had some good news–a request for a full–and felt the strong urge to read through my manuscript. One. More. Time. After not [...]

Welcome to 2008. I don’t believe in New Year resolutions, but I do have a few suggestions for writers wanting to start this year with energy and enthusiasm. We often talk about technical challenges on WU – plotting, character development, style, language and so on. We don’t deal so much with the health and wellbeing [...]

Does this happen to you? You’re driving somewhere that takes about 20 minutes. Suddenly, the solution to a knotty problem that’s been plaguing you in your wip pops into your head. But you’re driving. You can’t pull over. You can’t drive and write, either (though you think about doing it anyway). You pray desperately that [...]

Normally, Therese is the one with the health-related posts on writing.  But I came across this tidbit of news today that I thought I’d share with you: Writing Reduces Stress. Really?  Sometimes I think writing increases stress, especially when I can’t get a scene to work or everything on the page sounds like drivel. Researchers [...]

I’m putting on my health-writer cap to ask you an important question today: Sit much? As a writer, I’ll bet you do. It’s important to chat about, because anyone who sits for long periods of time can be at risk for a condition called deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Large blood clots can form in the [...]

You’re working feverishly on your latest novel when you notice it—a tingling pins-and-needles sensation in your fingers and hand. Those of us who spend a large part of our day typing away at a keyboard are at risk for a class of health problems called cumulative trauma disorders. One in particular stands out as being [...]

Got Casual Fridays? If you work from home, every day can be Casual (Fri)day, but if you work in a corporate setting M-F, then you might especially love dress-down workdays. Lucky you, I’m on deadline, which means I’m steeped in health information, which means I sometimes stumble across tippy nibbles that writers might be able [...]