Offline. What a weird concept. It didn’t even exist back in the eighties when the most we could do to “disconnect” was take the phone off the hook.

Which I never did.

That was back when I was the social version of myself.

Now I’m more a hermit version, but I still can’t

When I was a kid we lived near a Bible Camp where I went to camp most summers. Aside from kissing boys and buying candy and falling in “kid love,” my most vivid memory is sleeping in a covered wagon at a camp called “Wagon Train.”

Instead of cabins, we slept

My friend Carrie Mesrobian is getting ready to have her first novel published. With a real publisher and everything. The book is YA and is going to be rad and she’s gonna be famous and all that.

So yesterday, Carrie mentioned that she still doesn’t have a title for said forthcoming novel,

I just read my last post about creating quirky characters and groaned. Out loud. And made that hideous pig-snorting face reserved for people who have just done something stupid.

What kind of an idiot makes herself into a cutsie fake character on a blog? To make matters worse, I read this

This week I’m reading  Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower and, of course, now I’m thinking about how I like quirky, distinct characters in writing.

Also I’m wondering how best to create my own characters like Charlie, the book’s first-person narrator.

If you haven’t read the book, it’s worth the read. Unless

That’s what it feels like, this writing insanity: exposing yourself, then begging people to distribute the evidence.

The recent news that I’ve actually had my work accepted by a journal is bittersweet.

I’m completely neurotic about what my bio should say, my head shot, if my mother will disown me for the

Five hours ago I received an email from Narrative magazine congratulating me on having my teensy story accepted for publication. I’m so happy that I  feel like puking.

Narrative magazine! How I love that publication.

If you don’t already have the phone app, you really should, because it’s rad.

So what, you might ask, would anyone want to read

Gardening isn’t my thing. Not because I don’t like it, but because I forget to do important tending activities. Watering, for example.

In my house, only plants like spider plants survive because they can live on air for weeks.

But every spring I get the same itch that the rest of you

My last post was about my choice to pursue on MFA in creative writing. This one’s about which MFA program I chose and how I chose it.

But first I’d like to echo the article Poets & Writers wrote on the topic this past fall and say that my decision to

Diagram of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey

This week I’ve been obsessively searching for the magical ingredients of successful story writing. Not like the obvious stuff that we always talk about–character, theme, plot, blah, blah. And please don’t suggest I go read Joseph Campbell.

I’m talking about the magic! Secret somethings that

As a rule I like kid narrators.  I read a lot of them. An embarrassingly high percentage of the books I read are YA and most young adult novels feature a first-person narrator between the ages of 14 and 17.

This week, I met sixteen-year-old Jacob whom I accompanied on a quest to

On the heels of consuming several smarty pants books, I’m hungry for plot candy. Now feed me a story with action, imagination, and maybe a little sweet romance, please.

Don’t get me wrong. I love good character-driven literary fiction, too. I mean, I just finished a marvelously lyrical memoir by Sonja