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About Liz Michalski

Liz Michalski's first novel, Evenfall, was published by Berkley Books (Penguin). Liz has been a reporter, an editor, and a freelance writer. In her previous life, she wrangled with ill-tempered horses and oversized show dogs. These days she's downsized to one husband, two children and a medium-sized mutt.

Recent Posts by this author:

  • Sea Glass
  • How To Time Travel
  • My Superpower is Slacking Off
  • Biting the Bullet — Tracking my Writing Habit
  • An Introvert Walks Into a Writing Group …
  • Blow It Up
  • Bee Still My Writing — Why and How I’m Taking Time Off
  • Peanut Butter Plus Chocolate Equals Better Writing
  • What to Read When You’re Not Reading Books
  • Let Your (Sub)conscious Be Your Guide
  • My Guardian Angel of Bread
  • Author Bryn Greenwood on Dogs, Drugs, and Decisions

    • Sea Glass

    By 26 Comments

    Photo by David Schneider

    A few years ago my family purchased an antique apothecary jar. It’s lovely, tall and delicate with a curving shape, the type of jar once used to store cotton balls or candy. We display it on a high shelf and fill it with beach glass.

    There are two beaches near us where locals go to hunt for glass. The first, closest to our house, is the best. It’s rocky and not suitable for sun bathing, but walk there at low tide and you are likely to find fistfuls of sea glass, in colors ranging from brown to green to the coveted and rare blue.

    At first, that’s where we went. My husband and I would stroll there after dinner and fill our pockets, or the kids would walk with friends and return to spread their plunder on the table, proudly showing off their haul. And little by little the apothecary jar, which one seemed so enormous, began to fill up. The more glass it contained, the more striking it appeared, the more I couldn’t wait to see what it would look like when it was full.

    And then last summer, I was admiring the jar, the way the light played off the colors within and turned them into rich jewels, when it hit me. The layers of glass represented more than just a decoration. They stood for time with my family, for summers that were quickly passing by, for time that wouldn’t come again. Why was I rushing to fill it?

    The realization hit just when, due to a myriad of reasons, I was struggling to find happiness in my writing and elsewhere. I was trying to force the outcomes I wanted, slogging through with my head down, sad and missing the beauty around me. [Read more…]

    How To Time Travel

    By 10 Comments

    Imagine this. You’re sitting at your desk, toiling away on your latest manuscript. It’s been a frustrating few hours (or days, or weeks, or years) and the words aren’t coming together the way you’d like. You decide to take a break just as the doorbell rings. It’s the mail carrier with a registered letter for you! You accept it, and then stare. The letter is addressed to you in your own handwriting, with the title "writer" in big bold letters before your name. And the postmark is from five years … [Read more...]

    My Superpower is Slacking Off

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    It’s summer where I am, and the days are hot and heavy. Condensation beads the sides of my glass of ice tea. The dog rests motionless in front of the fan and the lines of my WIP, which should be marching across the computer screen like ants across hot pavement, are still. It’s summer. The season of unlimited time and no time at all. I forget this every year. September to June I’m mired by the school calendar, my days shaped by carpools and sporting events, by ballet classes and dance … [Read more...]

    Biting the Bullet — Tracking my Writing Habit

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    I’m a writer. I’ve been a writer since I first held a pencil and figured out how to spell, both somewhere around the first grade. (I was a late bloomer.) Writing is as integral to my identity as my name or my face. Yet somehow this past year, I found myself not writing. Sure, I was talking about writing. I was reading about the craft of writing. I was thinking about writing all the time. But the words were not making it to the paper. To be fair, other important activities were being neglected … [Read more...]

    An Introvert Walks Into a Writing Group …

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    Talk of collaboration is in the air lately. At Writer Unboxed, we’re not only great at supporting our fellow writers, we’re good at working with them too! Author Heather Webb’s recent post on the positives and pitfalls of collaboration immediately made me think of another WUer — our own Jan O’Hara. Jan, a former family physician who hails from Canada, has turned collaboration into a fine art. Her first book was one in a series of interconnected novels that shared a physical world and even … [Read more...]

    Blow It Up

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    Sometimes in life everything goes your way. And sometimes in life, you need to blow stuff up. I’m speaking metaphorically, of course. (Ignore the boxes of fireworks stockpiled in the corner for the Fourth of July.) Please don’t go buy explosives. Instead, think about what dramatic change in your writing life — in your writing relationships — would look like. And keep in mind that even metaphorical explosions can change your course. As a writer, I’m always looking for ways to be better. … [Read more...]

    Bee Still My Writing — Why and How I’m Taking Time Off

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    It’s been a hard year, writing-wise. A book I love isn’t being loved back by anyone in publishing at the moment. This book took more of my time and of my soul to finish than I’d like to admit, but in the publishing world, that’s never a guarantee of success. Another book that I’m revising has gotten ideas from witnessing the first book’s failure. This second book stomps its feet and sticks out its tongue as if it’s a sullen child. “I won’t!  I won’t do what you say!” it tells me every time I … [Read more...]

    Peanut Butter Plus Chocolate Equals Better Writing

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    When it comes to fiction writing, I am the original Poky Little Puppy. I tend to spend a long time thinking about my stories before I write them, scribbling a key line here, a paragraph there, then erasing them when they aren’t perfect and starting again. In other words, I take too damn long to finish the book. Some of my pokiness could originally be attributed to lifestyle: When I wrote my first book, I was a new mom and had little kids. I could barely carve out 15 seconds, let alone 15 … [Read more...]

    What to Read When You’re Not Reading Books

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    A few months ago I was making polite conversation, as one does,  with a parent at a sporting event where our children were attempting to thrash each other, as they do. It was cold and rainy and once we’d exhausted the topic of the weather, there wasn’t much to say.  Politics? We didn’t know each other, so best not to go there. Sports? Awkward, given the game in front of us. So I turned to my personal failsafe — reading.  “I don’t have time to read,” my new potential friend said.  And then saw … [Read more...]

    Let Your (Sub)conscious Be Your Guide

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    “I didn’t know what I was writing about until I’d finished the book.” Have you ever heard an author say that?  Have you ever said it yourself?  It’s happened to me more times than I can count. As authors, we can be blind to the themes in our own work.  I have a theory — often, what we’re writing about is influenced by what our subconscious is secretly grappling with.  If we can recognize those issues and themes, we can use them to deepen and strengthen our writing. First, let’s look at why we … [Read more...]

    My Guardian Angel of Bread

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    I lost my Guardian Angel of Bread this month.  That wasn't his name, of course.  Jimmy, an old-school Italian gentleman, was (it still seems strange to write that) the father of one of my best friends.  I met Jimmy when I was in my twenties, a newly minted adult trying to figure life out.  By becoming friends with his son and his wife, I was immediately swept into a wider circle that celebrated all of the most important things -- good conversation, good wine, and good food. Jimmy was a great … [Read more...]

    Author Bryn Greenwood on Dogs, Drugs, and Decisions

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    I first met Bryn Greenwood in an online writing group a few years ago, and I was immediately struck by how clear and authentic her voice was.  She doesn't equivocate in her conversations or her writing.  Her pull-no-punches style may sometimes be uncomfortable, but it's always interesting. Bryn, who bills herself as a "fourth-generation Kansan and the daughter of a mostly reformed drug dealer," has an MA in creative writing and two small press novels, but it is her latest work, All the Ugly and … [Read more...]