Have you ever been listening to a song and one part in the lyrics jumps out and grabs you?  A part that you just connect with?  There are a few songs that have one or two parts that I totally connect with.  Breathe, by Anna Nalick is one of those songs, and it actually has two parts that I dig, but this post is about only one of them. She’s talking about songwriting when she says, “…I feel like I’m naked in front of a crowd ’cause these words are my diary screaming out loud, and I know that you’ll use them however you want to.”  I don’t write songs, and I…

Here’s how I feel about editing my book: UGH.  When I write something, I end up editing it several times to get it just the way I want it.  I actually edit my blog several times before it’s published and I’m quite sure it’s full of mistakes that I’ve missed.  Sometimes, after I’ve published it and it’s too late, I see something and think, “Oh, I wish I would have said it this way or that way.” Editing something short, like a blog, isn’t too bad; the UGH comes in when it’s time to edit something that is in the neighborhood of 60,000 words, because that means you have to…

All week long, I’ve been struggling to come up with a topic to write about.  This is only my third blog and I’m having trouble already?  Pathetic, I know.  I had initially said that I’d blog about writing, book stuff, and everyday stuff.  Although I always try to do what I say I’m going to do, sometimes I can’t.  Well, I could, I guess, but right now I don’t want to.  When I come across something that interests or inspires me, I gotta go with it.  Today, I was inspired by a post I saw on Facebook.  So instead of writing about something everyday/ordinary, I’m going to write about something extraordinary.…

Fear.  It’s something we’ve all experienced, although some of us experience it more often than others.  I’m certainly no stranger to being scared.  In fact, here’s just a few of the things that frighten me:  Driving on icy roads or in an area that I’m not familiar with.  Scary movies.  Snakes.  Heights.  And sometimes, people, in general.  Actually, I could go on forever, so let’s just say that I’m pretty much scared of everything.  Maybe that’s why the cowardly lion was my favorite character in The Wizard of Oz. The good thing is that we can usually avoid a lot of things that we’re afraid of.  I stay off of the…

Back in late December, I started writing a book.  Roughly a month later, the first draft was complete.  I printed the first draft and set it aside to simmer for six weeks (advice I’d gotten from reading Stephen King’s book, On Writing.)  The reason for putting my manuscript aside, and vowing to not read even one paragraph of it, was to separate myself from it long enough so that when I went back to do the first read and edit, I had forgotten most of what I wrote, and could look at it objectively.  That advice turned out to be great advice, as did most of the advice King gives in On…