Put your hair up with a chopstick. This not only keeps it dry, it looks writerly. Think ahead. If you tend to accumulate almost-but-not-quite-out-of-ink pens, scribble test before you get soaked. Keep a washcloth nearby so you can keep your hands (and pages) dry. You can tolerate a much longer, much hotter bath if you…
Racism, Realism, and the 20th Century
Writing a book that takes place in 1928 requires certain adjustments. Adjustments in my way of thinking, but also in my way of using words. Kitty uses “O.K,” not the more modern spelling “okay.” She would never dream of taking the Lord’s name in vain. And when she wants to call bullshit, she calls “applesauce”…
My Small Contribution to the Health Care Debate
I usually try to keep politics off this blog, partly because I know not everyone wants to hear about it, but mostly, I confess, because I am a coward and I fear losing friends. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like political discourse has gotten a lot less friendly and a lot more…
Zombies Ate My Weekend
I may be just a mild-mannered writer in a ruffle-collared blouse, but even I have dreams that in the Zombie Apocalypse, I will be one of the few to survive. I imagine boarding up the windows and, if necessary, taking out the stairs from the first story of my house to the second. Zombies can’t…
Ode to a Writing Group
When you know you’ve met someone special, you don’t want to ever let them go. That’s the way it is with me and my current writing group. We started seeing each other more than five years ago when I lived in San Jose. And though it’s now a long distance relationship, somehow we manage to…
Shredded
I’ve been doing Jillian Michael’s famous 30 Day Shred for about… oh, 30 days now, though I have to admit those days have not been precisely consecutive. And it seems to be working. Jillian performs twenty-two minutes of exercises along with her assistants: Natalie, who models the hard version of the exercise, and Anita, who…
In Which I Get Angry
The web has been buzzing over the past few days with news of a horrifying gang rape outside a high school homecoming dance. The details of the crime are absolutely staggering: as many as twenty male students watched as a 15-year-old girl was raped and beaten for over two hours. This event comes just a…
In Which the Web is Awesome
OK, you already knew that the web was awesome, right? But perhaps you don’t truly appreciate the depth of its awesomeness. Like how you can get from one teensy granule of information to the exact knowledge you’re seeking. I was looking for a paragraph. Just a random graf, from a random page in a random…
And…. I’m Back
I’ve been absent from the blogosphere for almost two months now. Sorry to disappoint you, Mom! But I had gotten my groove back, writing wise, and I didn’t want any distractions. Now that I’m settled into the groove, I’m back to blogging. More tomorrow, but for now I’ll just mark my return with: Three Things…
The First Annual Kitchen Fest
Last week I was home in Texas (ah, Texas!) to visit the fam. My sister, Kate, just got back from a 2-year teaching gig in China, and as it happens, both she and I are really into cooking at the moment. Long before I arrived on site, we had agreed that we might spend basically…