Tag: writers block

  • Anniversaries on the edge

    My husband and I have an unusual tradition for celebrating our anniversary. We didn’t intend for this to be a metaphor, but it’s a little too on the nose.  We drive, surf, boat, cycle, hike in snow, rappel, or do some activity in which we’re moving forward, together. Sometimes we live a little on the…

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  • How NOT to do an Artist’s Date

    The Artist Date need not be overtly “artistic”– think mischief more than mastery. Artist Dates fire up the imagination. They spark whimsy. They encourage play. Since art is about the play of ideas, they feed our creative work by replenishing our inner well of images and inspiration. Julia Cameron – The Artist’s Way blog –…

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  • The Cracked Rib Christmas

    2023 is the year I leveled up for ten months.Then I leveled way down. I wrote three books and a novella. With my siblings, I cleaned out and sold my dad’s house, in a very long sale process involving a squatter. After my dad’s passing, I paid his bills and taxes and closed out his…

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  • The Laughing Loaf Bacon Bread recipe

    Bacon bread is by far the most popular bread item from the original Laughing Loaf Bakery I operated. It’s made from a biga, a pre-ferment. Because biga is my go-to bread method, I named the pesky little dog in my cozy mystery series after it. The pre-ferment is much better behaved than the dog. 😄…

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  • Crazy love

    My dad, who passed away last fall, was often a difficult person to deal with. But I never doubted that he loved me. Fiercely. One thing I learned pretty early on: when another person expresses love for you, you’re receiving that love through a filter they’ve pieced together from their life experiences.

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  • A house named hope

    Four years ago today, on April 22, 2019, I sat in a Korean restaurant having a good, very spicy lunch with my friend Ann. I received a call on my cell phone that felt surreal, though I knew it had been coming for a long time.

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  • New year—new news!

    New years is not my favorite holiday. To me it seems arbitrary to have a big raging party for the beginning of a new year. Seriously, what really changes on January 1? And as we’re still stuck in pandemic times—which I hereby designate PT—even less has changed. We faced more of a retreat into our…

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  • Writing myself out of a corner

      It happened with my first book, and it’s happening with the second. I plunge into writing my book gleefully, without an outline. I love creating an interesting cast of characters and putting them into painful, impossible situations to see what they do. And what they think. I am a discovery writer to a certain…

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  • Substitute

    I bake. I’ve loved doing it as long as I can remember.  About once a month, I bake communion bread for my church’s Sunday 10 a.m. service.Communion is a concept I’m not sure I fully understand. But I love the idea of everyone going up and sharing this bite of bread—the body of Christ—together. People…

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  • On writing: the superpower of smell

    Not everything you write needs to be for other people. But if you’re writing something you want someone else to read, you need to make a connection. I love how writer Michael Chabon calls this a handshake. The writer puts their hand out to make a connection with their words; the reader completes the handshake.

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  • The memory tree

    Home Short Fiction Blog X The memory tree I have friends who decorate their Christmas trees in color schemes, with tasteful white lights and gold ornaments. They’re beautiful. Everything matches. When you walk into their living room, the tree is an exquisite centerpiece, a Christmas tree out of a lifestyle magazine.  Our trees tend to…

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