I’m Back In Ireland Just In The Nick Of Time

Pull myself out of the U.S, drop myself in a totally different environment, and I’ve created for myself a clean slate. A chance to slip into a different routine, and commit to some much better rituals. Question is, where can you go to interrupt your bad habits...

I Refuse To Eat Cat Food

I just got back from Los Angeles, LA for those of you in the know.  I was attending AWP, a monster of a conference for writers, teachers, editors, and publishers. It’s sort of a big deal because there are over 12,000 people who attend, and you get to rub elbows...

Where To Go When You’re Blind

After months and months of working on a book, it’s easy to go blind to what you’ve got in hand. Especially if you’ve been going it alone without the guidance of a book coach like me. (Blatant PLUG!) You’ve been looking at the same arrangement of words for so...

A Puritan In Iran

I’m just back from a big writer’s conference in LA, where I spoke on a panel.  Let me tell you, there’s nothing more fun than hanging around 5,000 other people who love to talk about writing and words and books and tricks of the trade. That being...

A Devious, Cruel App For Writers

A writing prompt is a sentence designed to open the creative floodgates. Sometimes an image, or a picture, can serve to get the juices flowing, too. Get something down on the page, anything, and more words are guaranteed to follow. That’s the purpose of the thing. The...