This category identifies the blog entries I write about my life as a writer and my efforts to succeed in that field.
If I close my eyes, I thought, I’ll die. I forced my eyes to stay open and I stared at the monitor. It was a beautiful image. I couldn’t read or understand it–that required a medical degree–but I knew it showed my heart, and I could see that it still beat. My left hand...
When I first heard that Apple was developing a tablet device, I rolled my eyes and asked, “Who’s going to want that?” But the first time I saw the iPad, I answered my own rhetorical question. “Me! That’s who! I want one!” I don’t remember whether it was the week of its release or...
I’m a creature of habit. I suppose most people are in varying degrees, but I believe most people allow more randomness or spontaneity in their actions than I allow in mine. I have learned that my habits control my behavior almost every minute of the day. I have a routine even if I don’t...
My writing has always been mobile. Long before the iPad and the iPhone, long before the laptop computer, even long before the household computer became commonplace, I carried a backpack filled with books, dictionaries, a dozen pencils and pins, my personal journal, and at least one pad of paper. I wrote on the go....
Every writer, I suppose, suffers writer’s block at some point of his career, but I have been suffering it for at least two years, probably longer. I learned writer’s block can take several forms, involve several symptoms, and become a personal habit. Sometimes writer’s block is realizing, thirty-thousand words into a novel, that it’s...
I arrived in Onion Creek in December 1981, the day a snowstorm dumped a foot-deep blanket across the landscape. My parents had purchased Onion Creek Square only a few months before, and this was my first time seeing it. I had just graduated from college, and I needed a place to stay as I...
