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How to Keep Running Even If You Hate It
I’m no athlete. I made the cheering squad in high school only because I was loud and had a job shoveling horse manure, so I was strong enough to hold up the bottom of the pyramid. As the years went...
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What Can Puppies Teach Writers? Plenty
After my beloved dog Leo died, I entered a thick fog of grief. I felt his absence keenly because he was such an integral part of my life, keeping me company on walks and while I was writing, on the...
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Meet Bestselling Author Maddie Dawson, Whose Writing Tips Might Surprise You
(Peter Casolino-New Haven Register) Guilford author Sandi Kahn Shelton, who also writes under the pen name of Maddie Dawson. 3/31/14 Within days of publishing her newest novel, Matchmaking for...
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Where the Red Dirt Roads Have Led Me: Celebrating a 25-Year Love Affair with...
Just a week ago today, my new puppy, Merlin, and I were rambling down another one of Prince Edward Island’s red dirt roads with my good friend and fellow writer, Toby Neal. This particular road is a...
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Shipwrecked in Margaritaville
My friend Scott is Canadian. This gives him a secret power: he’s nice. It is therefore impossible to refuse him, because it would be like having a slapdown with a kitten. So, when Scott asked if my...
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Why Keep Writing?
It’s easy to give up on your writing. Whether you’re working on a novel, a memoir, a short story, or an article, writing is hard. Not shoveling-horse-stalls difficult, but hard in a way that can do...
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10 Ways to Blow Up Your Wobbly Book and Put It Back Together Again
Congratulations to everyone who took part in NaNoWriMo! Whether you made it to the finish line or not, we probably all have this in common after National Novel Writing Month: we have wobbly...
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Why Is That Book Taking You So Long?
Recently, one of my writing students asked for advice on how she should structure her novel. “I already have fifty pages and I don’t know where it’s going,” she complained. “You only have fifty...
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Women, Writing, and Guilt: How to Give Yourself Permission to Try
I’m on the home stretch of revising my novel (again). Lately I’ve been having trouble focusing at home, partly because it’s too cold to hide in my barn office, so I’ve had to write in the living room,...
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Write Like a Gardener. Garden Like a Writer.
My arm is itching like crazy because I have a poison ivy rash shaped like Italy. At least it’s not as bad as a couple of years ago, when my arm swelled to the size of a Spanish ham and the rash...
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How to Keep Going, Whether You’re Running or Writing
I’m a new runner, as in, I ran my very first mile without stopping only three years ago. But I’m an experienced workhorse of a writer. Recently, I realized that my two favorite activities have one key...
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Bestselling Author Anita Diamant Offers Surprising Advice on Writing–Just in...
One recent rainy Sunday afternoon, I joined other members of the Newburyport Writers group to soak up the wisdom of Boston-based bestselling author Anita Diamant. Anita was introduced by historical...
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How to Write Historical Fiction about a Guy Some People Love to Hate: Author...
For the past three years, I’ve been writing (and rewriting, and tearing my hair out over, and rewriting again) my first work of historical fiction, a novel about a woman artist set in the 19th...
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Ragdale: The Delights of Having a Room of One’s Own
From the moment I first declared myself a novelist in my twenties, there were doubters. My father, for starters. “You’ll never make a living. Why don’t you be a nurse?” he said. “Or a dentist! They...
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Writing through Panic
Back in early March, before it felt like we were trapped in a lousy cinematic mashup of Chernobyl, Contagion, and Zombieland, I was on a writing retreat with my good pal Toby Neal. We were holed up in...
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Why Museums Matter
I went to a museum yesterday. Last year, I went to so many museums that I lost track, haunting special archival collections to ferret out information and photographs I could use to write a novel set...
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HOW TO WRITE A MEMOIR: Part 1: WHAT’S IN YOUR LEGO BIN?
When our children were young, they accumulated so many Lego kits that we eventually filled several Lego bins with the pieces once the kits were taken apart. If you’re writing a memoir, or even...
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HOW TO WRITE A MEMOIR PART 2: DECIDING ON YOUR BOOK’S STRUCTURE
In the previous blog post, I discussed two ways of starting your memoir. No matter what approach you take, eventually you’ll have enough words on the page, or enough of an outline, to think about your...
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How to Write a Memoir Part 3: Five Easy Ways to Research Your Own Life
In my previous post, I talked about how to structure your memoir. I also promised that Part 3 of this series on writing memoir would highlight editing techniques. I lied. Before we get to editing,...
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How to Write a Memoir, Part 4: Kill Your Darlings in 7 Easy Steps
In his brilliant book about the writer’s craft, On Writing, Stephen King offers this handy nugget of editing advice: “kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little...
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