Friday night, we went to see “World War Z” in the theater. I hadn’t read the novel ahead of time, but even though the movie isn’t reported to follow the book closely at all I still left the theater feeling pretty sure that I would have preferred Max Brooks’ version. I’m beginning to wonder if…
“Your silence will not protect you. I blinked at the bumper sticker on the car stopped ahead of me at the traffic light. I hadn’t heard or read the statement before, but if I had been walking or skipping down the road these words would have tripped me up. I hadn’t read Audre Lorde’s powerful…
I’m trying something new right now: a chart/graph outline. The most famous example (currently/probably) on the internet is J.K. Rowling’s plot grid for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I first saw this about a month ago and was fascinated. Up ’til now, I’ve mostly used timelines to outline my novels. It’s basically…
This morning, I received an email from friend and fellow author Dale Ivan Smith. He’s recently returned from a two-week writing workshop, and while he was technically inviting me to a writers’ lunch?where we catch each other up on current projects, new ideas, present obstacles, etc.?he also shared some very good advice right out of…
At the beginning of this year, I made a wish list of all the writing, personal, and other professional projects I’d wanted to complete over the course of 2013. It was immediately apparent that what I’d spelled out was enough to fill three years of any normal person’s life, so I prioritized and pared down…
It’s been my sincere pleasure every month to write the Northwest Love Story feature for The Oregonian. Each Q&A offers an intimate and inspiring portrait of long-married and other notable couples in the newspaper’s readership area. In February 2011, I got an urgent email from an editor at The Oregonian. I’d written a few freelance…
