When you are standing on the green pounding your golf club into the ground and saying bad words you know you have truly lost your ever-lovin’ mind.

…and the Golf Torture Experiment with Innocent Husband continues.

 

Set in Montana…and Odessa, Munich, and London.
The pages of the cookbook tell the secrets of her family.

 

 

You need space, yes you do.

If you want to write, you need a space all to yourself.

You need a place for scribbling, drafting, drawing, and editing.

You need a place to concentrate, daydream, plan, and wonder, ‘What if…’

(Click on the link to see my columns on writing in Ms. Career Girl

A Writer’s Space

…or keep reading below.)

A Writer’s Space

 

And you need a place that inspires and makes you want to write, even if writing makes you sob like it’s raining out of your eyeballs or cackle evilly.

Your writing space should feel beautiful, creative, and encouraging to you.

I often write at my kitchen table.

I call it, not-so-originally, my Kitchen Table Office. I usually have flowers and I am almost always slugging down coffee from my favorite owl mug. If there are cookies nearby, then I have only a few feet to traverse to find them, thank goodness.

Who wants to work hard to find a chocolate chip cookie? Not me.

The lion is from Rebel Dancing Daughter when she went to Kenya. I stare at it for humor.

I keep journals around for ideas and to write through teeth-gritting problems I’m having with my book. One of my journals says:

Trust Your Crazy Ideas.

Which, by the way, you should, fellow writers. Take off and fly. Trust your crazy ideas and the zany, off-beat, swirling and twirling ones. Examine them. Throw them around. See if they’ll work.

I also love to write outside, in my backyard. This is called, again, not-so-originally, “My Backyard Office.”

I can get distracted because I love to stare at my garden and make outlandish plans for building a blue, curving slide from the second story into a pool, a ten foot rock fountain, a hot tub with Keanu Reeves inside, and that sort of thing.

But I find it peaceful, too, which makes me want to write. I’ve seen hummingbirds, blue jays, raccoon, and possums out there and we have no problems with each other.

As long as the bees aren’t swarming and wanting to eat me, I like my little corner under the trumpet vine, next to the impatiens.

Sometimes I have to write with Little Kitty nearby, the cat that Darling Laughing Son dropped off at my house before he skipped away across the seas for an internship.

I like watching our wisteria vine grow and my faux windmill spin.

Adventurous Singing Daughter and I planted Sunflowers and I love watching them grow taller each day.

An outside “office” works for me. Nature is inspiring. Gardening gives me ideas.

Maybe it would work for you, too, although for those of you who get three feet of snow in winter it probably won’t work well unless you can keyboard in gloves.

I do have a place for my extra books and journals in a small bedroom upstairs.

And I do have a place for “junk.”

The junk is in a corner of my dining room. I have NO IDEA why I keep it there. Really. It’s a nice dining room with red walls and a chandelier.

It makes no sense unless we’re going to EAT the manuscripts and notes. Paper is not tasty but, alas, there it stays.

I should move it, I should.

I probably won’t.

Many writers have cleaned out closets and moved in a small table.

Other writers have claimed part of a room in their home for their office. The room might also have exercise equipment (MUST we use it?) and boxes of Christmas decoration (We really need to haul a bunch of that to Goodwill), but it’s their space.

Some writers have a desk in the family room where the kids screech and yell and the dog barks. They learn to shut all that out unless there’s blood or the police arrive with a noise complaint.

Some have a true writer’s office. (See PS below.)

Their writer’s office is only for them, decorated with color, quotes, books they love, and lists of Things To Do. The views are cool, the dogs wander in to chat, and their imagination leaps about.

Go and create a space for yourself. Go make pretty. Find a corner. Find a room. Find a wall. Find a desk, find a table.

Clean it out.

Plug your computer in.

Add flowers, photos, a stapler, journals, notebooks, pens, a printer, and cool souvenirs. Add you.

Then write. Write away.

 

PS

Where Writers Write is coming soon!

We’ll peek into the offices of some of your favorite writers including Catherine Ryan Hyde, Barbara Claypole White, Kristy Woodson Harvey, Ann Garvin, Amy Sue Nathan, Laura Drake, Amy Impellizzeri, and Katie Rose Guest Pryal.

 

 

Fun book giveaway (HUGE giveaway) next Tuesday if you’re interested. We have dozens of writers participating.

Click on this facebook link, below, and we’ll accept you into Readers Coffeehouse, which is an online book club hosted by writers Catherine Ryan Hyde, Kimberly Belle, Kimberly Brock, Jo-Ann Mapson, Laura Drake, Barbara Claypole White, Steena Holmes and moi!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/ReadersCoffeehouse/

Good luck! I hope you win a book, I really do.

 

 

I was so happy about this I teared up! Debbie Macomber recommended my new book, “No Place I’d Rather Be,” as one of thirteen books to read on Book Bub.

She’s a wonderful author and a wonderful person, and I am so delighted I am going to make myself chocolate chip cookie bars and say, “Cheers to you, Debbie!”

 

13 New Books and Old Favorites Recommended by Debbie Macomber

I needed a laugh.

Just had to post this.

 

I posted this question on facebook recently, and thought you all might like to see the answers. Post yours below, if you would like!

This is a very important and extremely serious question so grab a slice of pie and ice cream and get ready to think really, really hard. If you had to go and live inside one of these books for the rest of your life, which would you choose and why? Extra points: Which character would you be?

1) The Narnia Chronicles.
2) The Lord of The Rings
3) Star Wars
4) Fifty Shades of Grey
5) Little House on The Prairie
6) Outlander

 

 

 

She threw her wedding dress into a dead tree on a dusty road in North Dakota and took off to a farmhouse painted pink with a rainbow bridge in the front yard and five giant concrete pigs. She started over.

This is the cheapest I’ve ever seen Julia’s Chocolates, paperback, sell for. $7.43.

https://www.amazon.com/Julias-Chocolates-Cathy-Lamb/dp/0758214626/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

 

This article is not actually all about chocolate, although it looks delicious, and I definitely need more in my diet for nutritional purposes ONLY.

No, this article is about writing.

I had to go to some really smart people to get advice on how to write.

Thanks to these really smart people. I hope you have a box of chocolates today: Amy Guertin Reichert, Amy Nathan, Susan Gloss Parsons, Kaira Sturdivant Rouda, Weina Dai Randel, Eileen Goudge, Ellen Urbani, Lisa Barr, Sally Koslow Nicole Lynn Baart, Kerstin Carlson March, Brandi Megan Granett, Katie Rose Sandra Block and Sonja Yoerg.

Chocolates For Life And Advice On Writing

(Printed in Writers In the Storm: http://writersinthestormblog.com/)

I recently started golfing. My husband (nicknamed “Innocent Husband” because the poor man can never be held responsible for what his wife says or writes), made me.

He has been hoping I would golf with him for over two decades.

I have resisted. Even thinking about trying to put a tiny white ball into a tiny hole hundreds of yards off made my brain want to bust open and shriek.

But Innocent Husband recently bought me clubs, smiled endearingly, and I caved.

I am a terrible golfer. No one told me that golf balls have evil brains. No one told me that the golf ball will do whatever it wants to do no matter how I swing the club. I have hit trees and almost Innocent Husband. I have hit my ball into grass so deep, and so far off course, it took ten minutes to find it.

But I love it. Unbelievably. Miraculously. I love it. As I love writing.

So let me link golfing and writing if I can. I think they have some things in common besides swear words.

1) Practice Swinging and Scribbling . Golfing takes practice. It’s going to take a lot of practice for me to get the ball to go straight instead of heading straight towards the sand pit. Writing does, too. It takes practice for beginners and for people who have won The National Book Award. You must write. Write and edit your manuscript, but write an article or a blog, too. If you like poetry, write a poem. Write a letter. Write on your computer, write by hand in a beautiful journal. Write in a whole new genre. Write.

2) Analyze and Dissect. You need to analyze your golf swing so you don’t keep swinging and swinging…and the golf ball is still sitting there cackling meanly up at you from the tee.

You need to analyze your own work. Don’t tell yourself you’re terrible, but take a hard, deep, honest look at your plot. Will it find an audience? Who is your audience? Is the plot, truly, interesting? What about the characters? Are they unique, compelling, funny, maddening or diabolical? If they need to be likable, are they likable? What about the pacing of your book? Slow pacing kills a plot. I have seen this a hundred times. Is your plot moving right along?

What about the dialogue? Is it realistic? Is it flat out amusing or threatening or thought provoking or utterly sincere? Does it tell the reader about the personality of the characters? Are you using the setting and weather to enhance the plot? Are there character arcs? Will your story evoke emotion in the reader? Will it make them laugh or cry or think or all three? It should.

3) Get Outside and Groove. You need to get outside to golf unless you want to break a window and you need to get outside to write. On nice days I set my computer up on my table in my back yard. Hiking helps. Walking helps. Going to the lake or the beach or the mountain helps. (Don’t golf in the mountains.) You need to get a different perspective and being outside will help you think through your work.

4) Learn from others, like I learn from Innocent Husband when he’s coaching me on the golf course and telling me not to treat the golf ball as the enemy. Read your favorite authors and take their work apart. Why do you like their books? How can you put those elements in your own work? I have learned from Geraldine Brooks, Alice Walker, James McBride, Bailey White, Kaye Gibbons, etc. If you read a book you didn’t like, why? What can you do to make sure you don’t repeat that author’s mistake?

5) Never throw your golf clubs in the lake. Too expensive. Never quit writing if it’s something you love to do. Never.

Good luck. I mean that, I do.