shopify analytics ecommerce tracking
Walsh and Bolton Twitter Unconference Advertise Facebook Book Zazzle Search

About Marsha Moyer

Recent Posts by this author:

  • Breathing Room
  • Hell or High Water
  • Unfinished
  • Getting Naked
  • Finished, Part 2
  • Finished
  • Stand Up and Shout! (How the Dixie Chicks won 5 Grammys for refusing to shut up and sing, and why it matters to you.)
  • HEA? No Way.
  • Proofs
  • You’ve Got Mail

    • Breathing Room

    By

    Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketSince posting here a few weeks ago about the challenges of revising my fourth manuscript, I’ve gotten a deadline extension and a new sense of perspective. While some writers work best with clocks ticking and whips cracking, I’m not one of them. I need room to stretch out, to let the characters run wild, to let the story unfold in ways that my brain simply isn’t capable of producing on short notice.

    Now that I’ve got a little bit of breathing room, I’m fascinated by the way my imagination has risen to the occasion. I can sit down at the keyboard and allow my mind to go quiet, reaching into that deep place I was afraid I’d lost access to. Sometimes the result is as simple as expanding a two-word description into a sentence or a paragraph, permitting myself to see and feel the landscape through my characters’ eyes. Sometimes it’s the ability to see the story from a whole new point of view—another narrator’s, or a different place in time. [Read more…]

    Hell or High Water

    By

    My advice this week to aspiring writers: Try not to have a book come out in the same week as a hundred-year flood. If you’re not in the midst of it personally, you’ve probably heard about the record rainfall taking place right now across the Plains states and Texas. When it first started falling, more […]

    Unfinished

    By

    I recently wrote two posts called “Finished” and “Finished, Part 2” about my feelings after submitting the manuscript of my fourth book to my publisher. As you may have surmised from the title of this week’s post, I’m back at the drawing board. Having talked to my editor on the phone on Friday and subsequently […]

    Getting Naked

    By

    Over the weekend, in the collectibles section at a used-book sale, I came across a volume whose dedication contained this quote: “There is a moment of profound discouragement which succeeds to prolonged effort; when, the labor which has become a habit having ceased, we miss the sustaining sense of its companionship, and stand, with a […]

    Finished, Part 2

    By

    Since I finished my manuscript a few weeks ago, I’ve been suffering from what I can only call EHS—Empty Head Syndrome. Not only do I have zero desire to write, but I can’t concentrate. My brain flits from subject to subject, restless and prickly, trying to pin down something worthy of attention. I check out […]

    Finished

    By

    Three weeks ago, the day before the deadline stipulated by my contract, I sent the manuscript of my fourth novel to my editor. Each time I begin a book, I set out believing that this time I’ll find the magic formula, the one that will catapult me to my rightful place among other published writers: […]

    Stand Up and Shout! (How the Dixie Chicks won 5 Grammys for refusing to shut up and sing, and why it matters to you.)

    By

    I’m probably just one of hundreds of bloggers this week sounding off on the topic of the Dixie Chicks’ sweep of Sunday night’s Grammy Awards, winning all five categories in which they were nominated, including Song, Record, and Album of the Year. A subdued but visibly triumphant Natalie Maines remarked that people had voted with […]

    HEA? No Way.

    By

    I was struck by something Vicky mentioned in her post last week about the back-and-forth between her and her publisher over a semi-upbeat ending for her book. I’ve been getting email in advance of the release of my next book from readers anxious about whether or not the story will end on a happy-ever-after note. […]

    Proofs

    By

    A writer whose name escapes me (Rita Mae Brown? Virginia Woolf?) once said, “You only know the book I wrote. You’ll never know the book I meant to write.” That pretty much describes to a T how I’m feeling, having just spent the weekend reading the second set of page proofs of my new book, […]

    You’ve Got Mail

    By

    Before I got published, I always thought that nothing could be better than actually seeing and holding copies of my books in my hands. I’ve since discovered that fan mail is a close second. Like many writers working today, I have a website with a form readers can use to contact me with their comments. […]