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The Fun Part
Writing is emotionally fraught, especially when that difficulty lacks joy, as tends to be the case during a first draft. First drafting involves a lot of wandering in the desert wilderness, not only struggling to find my way from beginning to end, but also struggling to convince myself that the effort is worthwhile. I’m a…
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A Little Rain Must Fall
Record-setting rain and a leaky roof, among other things.
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A Moderately Grueling Economics Exercise
Sheesh, not more thinking! I want to get back to writing!
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Courage from the Outside In
In the dream, I was making love to a woman, and at a crucial point my anatomy changed and I became a man. (A few months later, I dreamed that I lost my husband on the train and Deb took his seat. Needless to say, I soon divorced.)
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Let It Be: Solving One Damned Problem After Another
I’ll hand off the problem to the dark part of my brain, and try not to think about it at all. (I can’t really describe this process–it’s an act of will, of letting go of the task and letting it be another person’s problem; except the other person is the other me, a hard-working and…
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Writing Sickness
We caught a virus, which, although quite mild, turned me into a zombie for a few days, with a bonus bout of mild depression. I wanted to write, didn’t feel like writing, suspected I’d be unable to write, and wondered if I’d ever write again.
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The machinery of writing: First drafts, technology, and doing what works
When I set out to write my first novel, I wrote it with pen on notebook paper in a three-ring binder, which I had on hand because I needed them for sixth grade. My family didn’t own a typewriter and home computers hadn’t been invented, but I took a typing class in junior high school—the…
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That Amazing Feeling
Today I finished writing the first chapter of the first draft of a new book. During the labor of preparing DANCING JACK and THE WATCHER’S MASK for publication, the writing of a new chapter in a new book functioned like a dog biscuit dangled before a corgi, and, corgi-like, I was often tempted to…
Laurie J. Marks 