Archive

My good ol’ AmeriCorps crewmembers! When I first moved to Western North Carolina 10 years ago, I came fresh off the trail. For ten months prior, I worked with a backcountry trail crew [...]

I have no clue who this is, but it’s how I feel sometimes. Thanks for letting me dweeb-out about process on The Writing Life Blog these past few weeks… I shifted gears this week in my [...]

For four days it was nothing but wind and wind and wind. Places just a few miles from here were hit with 20 inches of snow, much worse than the South Toe Valley’s measly few inches. But the [...]

Hear, hear good readers! There’s nothing like giving a public reading to make me feel certain I’ve moved back home. Juniper Bends Reading Series in Asheville is hosting an event for 5 [...]

Last week, I blogged about imitation as inspiration. On the heels of that writing exercise–which I employed all week long–I can say I’m also convinced that imitation is a [...]

I’ve been copying. That’s right. Borrowing another writer’s structure and trying to stuff it with my own words.  Actually, I’ve been doing it all morning [...]

I pride myself on being a pretty low maintenance, portable writer. After all, I specialized in moving around for three years with this writing life, and by and large my biggest “tool” [...]

Sunday afternoon I took off for a week on Oak Island, the very southern tip of the North Carolina outer banks. Being someone else’s guest and also being relatively naive about fishing in [...]

The best part about hiring a coypeditor besides being provided with peace of mind that I’ve done all I can to make my manuscript as design-ready as possible, is the fact that I learned [...]

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of learning for me, as my agent and I negotiated our way through the final amendments to the book contract. But one clause in that contract, perhaps more [...]