My friend Beverly sent me this list, with a note, “Works for novels, too.” Billy Wilder’s ten rules of good filmmaking: 1: The audience is fickle. 2: Grab ‘em by the throat and never let ‘em go. 3: Develop a clean line of action for your leading character. 4: Know where you’re going. 5: The […]
A conversation this morning about fear and what to do with it, and then this quote in my afternoon reading: “The pain is in the aversion. The healing magic is attention. Properly attended to, pain can answer our most crucial questions, even those we did not consciously frame. The only way out of our suffering […]
“It is learning to discipline ourselves to stay with a question long enough to determine what insight it has for us that is important. Otherwise we will simply know what everyone else knows about it. As Goethe puts it, ‘All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart knows more.’” -Joan Chittister
My manuscript did not win in the PNWA historical fiction category, but this morning I’m feeling pretty good about the entire experience . I was a finalist! I heard some inspiring speakers, including Greg Bear and Deb Caletti. I met Margie Lawson, a psychologist, writer, and writing instructor I had never even heard of. She […]