What better way to launch a new year of blog posts but with three success stories? My three writing coach clients-turned-authors have several things in common. They're all in the financial field. A couple of them overcame sizeable challenges that could have prevented...
With the dawning of a new year, I look back on the past one with a sense of wonder. I suppose that's not uncommon, but 2024 was as rewarding as it was challenging. Ten weeks into the year, I experienced a bout of vertigo that left me lying in a darkened room trying my...
I posted this seven years ago and again in 2022. Here's to a year when it no longer seems so pertinent. “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”...
I was lying on my couch enjoying a little downtime along with my two pups, Moke and Misha, and an extra, Harley, who's Misha's sister and visits often. I was chill. They were chill. Until suddenly, they weren't. Little did I know that I was about to experience an...
Tomorrow would have been my mom's 97th birthday. While it's unlikely that she would have lived that long, her death more than 20 years ago hasn't gotten any easier to accept. I discovered just how true that is when I opened an old spiral notebook a few weeks ago and...
I joined Central Oregon's 100 Women Who Care chapter during Covid. Despite--or because--of being closeted at home, I needed a sense that I was making a difference. The first 100 Women Who Care group was founded in 2006 by Jackson, Michigan's former mayor, Karen...
Last week's dip into blog posts of the past convinced me to do more of it. While I've published two posts already this year about my experience ghostwriting The Legacy of Luna--one about writing my first national bestseller and the other about climbing the redwood...
I started this blog just over 15 years ago. Last week, I decided to drop into the way-back machine and check out my very first post in 2009 about sharing your story. I thought the post might be dated. It's not. Not even slightly. So, I decided to run it again,...
Without ever saying a word, my dad taught me to celebrate every writing-related win. You finished your rough draft? Celebrate! You finished the second draft? Celebrate! Your book sold? Celebrate! Your book just got published? Celebrate! So, yes, I celebrated when Open...
Heads up! You've probably never thought of the concept of defensive writing. Neither had I, until I was on a dog walk--where I do some of my best thinking, especially about blog posts--and realized that I engage in defensive dogging as way to keep us all safe,...
