Blog
WRITING
My greatest strength is quietly ruining me
If you attended Deep Write Saturday, then you know all about writing prompts, which I offered up in case you didn’t know which direction to go. Writing prompts are a great way to unstick yourself, particularly when you’re trying to work linearly. I decided to take my...
My mother has no idea what’s wrong with her (and she’s fine with that)
On Saturday I called my mother to check on her. She's getting up there in age, and she'd been flat on her back for a couple of weeks. Zero appetite. Which, if you know my mother, is the part that should worry you. The woman has never met a casserole she couldn't...
Excuse #1: I don’t have time to write a book (let alone become a bikini model)
Oh, I'd say I hear this excuse for not writing a book once a day. Mostly from people who actually WANT to have a book to their name at this point in their career. If I'm out in public and talking about what I do for a living, I'll hear it at least twice. Which is why...
720 pages and still no book
The Zoom rang at 7 AM my time. Evening in Bali. Kris sat in candlelight — she doesn't like overhead bulbs after dark, never has. We hadn't talked in a couple of years. She's a former client, a fellow traveler in the long messy business of writing a memoir, and a...
READING
My mother has no idea what’s wrong with her (and she’s fine with that)
On Saturday I called my mother to check on her. She's getting up there in age, and she'd been flat on her back for a couple of weeks. Zero appetite. Which, if you know my mother, is the part that should worry you. The woman has never met a casserole she couldn't...
I once tried to hire a Navy Seal to babysit
Decades ago, back when my kids were just edging into adolescence, my best friend was a fellow single mother. She played cello in an orchestra, which meant she worked nights — orchestras don't tend to perform at lunchtime — and I often kept her son at my place when she...
Why I just lost two hours to a vegan TikTok (and what it taught me about your book)
The other night Walt sent me an Instagram reel of a Korean American woman making army stew while she told a story about her father, as a teenager, running for his life from police who'd just gunned down student protesters in 1960. Her dad's takeaway from a near-death...
That tell-all you’re dying to write? Read this first.
I'd heard about Careless People long before I finally cracked it open in the airport. It had been sitting in my Kindle alongside all the other fantastic books I swore I’d eventually get to. But once I started the memoir, I couldn't put it down. Which was great,...
LIFE
My greatest strength is quietly ruining me
If you attended Deep Write Saturday, then you know all about writing prompts, which I offered up in case you didn’t know which direction to go. Writing prompts are a great way to unstick yourself, particularly when you’re trying to work linearly. I decided to take my...
My mother has no idea what’s wrong with her (and she’s fine with that)
On Saturday I called my mother to check on her. She's getting up there in age, and she'd been flat on her back for a couple of weeks. Zero appetite. Which, if you know my mother, is the part that should worry you. The woman has never met a casserole she couldn't...
The morning we got lost and found out who we were
It was Good Friday, roughly 6:30 in the morning, the kind of cold spring day that makes you question your life choices. Three of us — all marathon running buddies, all colleagues at the same chemical company in the next town over — laced up our shoes in a parking lot...
The half-life of relevance (and why panicking won’t save you)
Walt and I have this conversation probably once a month. Who was that woman — the one who wore purple and taught people to sell from the stage? Where'd she go? We genuinely cannot remember her name. And here's the thing: a few years ago, she was everywhere. Speaking...
Check out my book
A no-nonsense guide that teaches writers how to strategically build books using a brick-by-brick content system, focusing on practical results over perfectionism.
Subscribe to my newsletter
Want to know my deal? Well, these are some of my stories. This is my take on life, writing, and reading.