The following is the beginning of the first chapter of the novel I have been working on for some time now (think years; I'm a slow write...

I write a column for the Idaho Press-Tribune called the Front Porch. It has a chatty tone and contains the little news you would expect of a...

If I were an English teacher, I would allow people to turn in audio essays. Now, I understand that English teachers are supposed to teach ...

My final flash fiction attempt for the writing contest I entered was the attempt I submitted (and was rejected based on). I originally titl...

As a review from last week: I entered a flash fiction writing contest, and I didn't win (whoops, I didn't mention that part earlier,...

I have not written much flash fiction, but then I saw there was a Boise-area writing contest asking for it. I have been trying to push myse...

Leo himself. Pretty intense beard. (Note: This post was written less than an hour after finishing Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina . My ...

In Writing Tools , Roy Peter Clark brings up an interesting question: Who is in your writing support group? He argues that every author ha...

I had a small identity crisis a few weeks ago. Ever since I was a child learning how to write, I have written stories. The first one I rec...

The Death Rattle Writers Festival, based in Nampa, ID, was this weekend. I asked my husband to go to the short story event with me, and he s...

No, " Settled " was not accepted by the Death Rattle Writers Festival -- but it's okay. Here is what I heard from them, first ...

I thought I wasn't going to make my goal of submitting something to the Death Rattle Writer's Festival, but I was wrong! However...

Charles Dickens Douglas Adams I let you down by not analyzing my author experiment last week. I forgot and wanted to talk about the...

Experiment: Read an author for 15 minutes, then write for a few minutes. Repeat process with five different authors. Purpose: To illustrate ...

One of the best things to happen to me in high school was the English assignment to annotate the books we read. Annotate, as in take notes a...

One of the joys of my job is I get paid to read and do what I've been doing on this blog all along--review. As I said earlier, though, I...

I was put in a tough position this week. A woman who lives in my area had written and published a book, Briarwood Cottage , and she wanted m...

Confession: I have entered fewer than five -- much fewer than five -- writing contests in my life. But I am planning on entering another soo...