Writer friends, pass it on.

Today Facebook's memory was a good one.
It was a link to a post I'd written WAY back, on a group blog of southern writers.

But the message is still true. 
I couldn't have published a single book, possibly not a single essay, or book review, or even those little poems when I was nine years old -without the help of friends.

HERE'S THE LINK to the essay. 

(And here's the photo accompanying it. My friend Leslie's porch, where our writing group enjoyed a day in the "mountains" and lunch on the porch.)

Hearing Voices

It's my turn over at my Southern Writers group blog. I'm pondering voice, big-bosomed English teachers, bug men, Louisiana bayous, nabs, New Jersey lady preachers. You name it, they are speaking to me. Much as I'm trying to shut a whole lot of them out.

Click here if you want to go there.

POCKET MUSE #2

I've spent the morning with my new book: THE POCKET MUSE: Endless Inspiration, by Monica Wood. I wrote about these books last week on my group blog, A Good Blog is Hard to Find. I called that post Write Like a Hummingbird

because-- well, click on over there and find out why.

Check out all the places I've marked already. And I'm only about a third of the way through.

A few sample quotes, from the author (there are also quotes from famous writers, though perhaps not as many as in Book #1. Then again, that's not what these little books are all about):

In a writing life, things are always about to happen. 

If you keep your hat in the ring, sooner or later somebody's going to need a hat.

There's also one of the best pieces of advice about choosing titles I've ever read-- on p. 97. Perhaps more to come on that topic later. 

Or you could just buy the book. It's really a bargain. The perfect size for travelers. 

And if you aren't a writer? I'd recommend it just for thinkers.

Things I Love

Figs! 

For so many reasons.

And when I can't get to my sister's to pick her figs and the New Jersey Farmers' Markets just sold their only basket, I have these ceramic beauties my daughter brought me from her summer studying in Florence.

Her cousin showed us the shop. I bought two. But they are heavy-ish, and we pack light in our family. So imagine my surprise when my daughter came home with more figs--and even two peaches--  for my birthday that year.

They live in the bowl I gave my mother the spring my husband and I lived in California.
It's mine now.

Many things to love in this picture.

Here's a funny (I hope) blast from the past about My Great Fig Fiasco, my first blog post ever on the Southern Writers Blog: A Good Blog is Hard to Find.

Good Blog is Hard to Find: Luna Madness

That's the name of my group blog made up of some amazing Southern writers. Yesterday was my turn to post. We are given assigned topics, totally voluntary. This time it was "living with a lunatic."

When I told my husband what I was writing about, and that I was certainly not a lunatic writer, there was silence from the other side of the car. Sometimes that means he didn't hear what I was saying. This time he totally heard. "Well, sometimes..." he started to answer.

You mean those days I locked myself in my room and glared if he dared disturb me? Hauled all my stuff to the quiet of the library? Read aloud to my computer? Scribbled crazy sayings on the back of our checkbook? What, me a crazy writer?

In my post I did not admit to true craziness. Click here if you'd like to see what I confess to.

And thanks, Julie, for the Luna inspiration. Not to mention for understanding creative craziness. Maybe it takes one to understand one?

Related posts: Blizzard!
Lime Curd

What's Nature Got to Do With It?

It's my turn this month over at my group blog: A Good Blog is Hard to Find.

Which, in this case, really isn't. Such talented Southern writers! Many of your favorites. Check them out.

Click right here for my take on using nature in your writing.

And here's a preview of my inspiration!

It's My Party I'll Invite Who I Want To!

(okay, okay WHOM just doesn't have that certain ring...)

I'm three and I get to invite three friends to this party, right?
Here are some of my Blog Buddies. My Writing Blog Buddies.

A Good Blog is Hard to Find

(Yes, that's my group blog. And here's my recent post. But if you love southern books and their writers, scroll around and you'll be delighted and impressed.)

From the Mixed-up Files of Middle Grade Authors
Great posts, always consistent. Interviews, giveaways, writing tips.

And because I never was very good at narrowing guest lists, I'll cheat and share the granddaddy of all blog lists. You can pick your favorite. Check out Jen Robinson's blog, Shelf Elf, Fuse #8, Brooklyn Arden, Cynsations- See, I could go on and on with my birthday party!

Best Book Blogs for Kids, Tweens and Teens

The Great Boxing Day Blizzard- HoHoHo?

I hope everybody had a great Christmas. I'm snowed in, warm and toasty, with my family in New Jersey. Yes, I know, the blizzard of the decade and all that stuff. Don't ask.
But we survived and now it's time to hunker down with a good book. Or maybe a thought-provoking blog entry.

 Here's a suggestion- my turn over at A Good Blog is Hard to Find, that great group of Southern writers that are such fun to follow.

Click right here for my thoughts about eBooks. And Book Spying. And a few other things.

A Good Blog...

It's my turn over at the group blog I write for. Although we have assigned topics about writing, we don't always have to follow. This time up, I took the guidelines and fiddled a bit. Our fearless leader, Kathy Patrick (who's vying for a spot on Dancing With the Stars! An author spot!) suggested we blog about books that have inspired us, who our favorite authors might be, who is our author Best Friend.

I wrote about two writers. One from my earliest writing and editing days in Cleveland High School. By my senior year, Miss Effie Glassco had taught senior English at CHS, possibly since my dad had been in school there. We studied the textbook I would use in my freshman college English class (which I was able to slide through because of Mrs. Glassco!), and for our literature assignments, there was no looking at the book during discussions. Either you knew it or you were mortified. This was in the days of "tracking" and we were probably what would now be AP English, and I'd never studied so hard in my entire high school career. But wow, did I learn a lot.

My second Author Best Friend, from the post, is the person frequently on the other end of my HELP! emails and phone calls, Leslie Guccione. She's one of those mentors who believes in passing the goodness around, paying it forward.

If you click over to the Southern Writers blog, be sure to spend some time there. Kerry Madden wrote a recent post about her favorite book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Don't miss it. You'll probably find some of your Author Best Friends there, waiting to be read!

A Good Blog...

Our Southern Writers blog has a new administrator, and all the members are taking this blogging turn to reintroduce themselves. If you haven't visited A Good Blog is Hard to Find, this might be an excellent time to click on over. (In other words, tonight was my time to post.) There are some truly amazing writers over there. Check it out.

Related post: A Good Blog...

A Good Blog...

My turn over at the Southern Writers Blog. Click here to get there. The optional topic this time was setting so I had a chance to use my friend Julie's shoes. If that doesn't get you over there, how about the picture...

Summer Time...

It's been so hot, even in New Jersey, this week that all I can do is sit still, dreaming up ways to stay cool. I know, I know. Writing while sweating is supposed to be good. After all, didn't my home state of Mississippi produce more accomplished writers than almost any other? And that was pre-airconditioning.

Although I'm not writing, I am reading- a perfect summertime activity if ever there was one. And just now I stumbled across this posting from my group blog A Good Blog is Hard to Find. Rereading it made me think this hot June day would be a perfect time to share it here. If the picture doesn't send you searching for a cold frozen treat, nothing will...


Photo credit: Scott Keeler, St. Petersburg Times


Details, Details (or What Sno-Cones Have Taught Me About Writing)
This season’s blog theme is What Writing Has Taught Me About Life. No, we don’t have to do the assignment. We can blog about anything that catches our fancy. After all, it’s not 8th grade math class. But I was always a bit of a teacher's pet, even did the extra credit stuff. I take these “voluntary” assignments seriously.

But not too seriously. So in honor of summer, I’ve turned my assignment around.

By the time I took to writing professionally, giving up another career to write, I had already learned a lot about life—and not from writing. So today I’m thinking instead about what life has taught me about writing.

Specifically, what eating Sno-cones teaches me about writing fiction.

Stay with me here. By studying Sno-cones carefully, I understand the importance of detail, the use of emotion, the seriousness of research, and the tricks to finding the perfect image in every word. And getting it right.

First off, is it Sno-cones or Snow Cones or Sno-balls? (Or some might make a case for Italian Ice, but if we are setting the story in the South, they would be dead wrong.)

In Mississippi, where I grew up, kids ate Sno-cones, spelled like that. And I didn’t think much about it. Then a couple from New Orleans opened a Sno-ball (spelled like that) stand a short drive from my Florida neighborhood. My transplanted Louisiana relatives were ecstatic. I was confused.

These Sno-balls looked like the summer treats of my childhood—the paper cups, squished to overflowing, that turned to soupy liquid when most of the ice is munched away. But then the proprietor of the Sno-ball stand asked if I wanted cream on top. Cream? On a Sno-cone? No, here they’re selling Sno-balls and sure, I’ll try the cream.

So right off the bat, Sno-cones have taught me the importance of research and fact checking, even in fiction. Not to mention spelling. Most of the time, you can’t fool your readers with mistaken details. Especially if the details are part of their history.

Now I’m working on a kids’ novel set in Florida, in the summer. Small-town Florida, a place where kids ride their bikes to the Sno-cone stand. Where they drip orange and purple all over their white shorts, just like my friend Eileen remembered when I asked around for Sno-cone stories.

Life— in the form of a frozen treat-- teaches me that memories are an important component of fiction.

Remembering in all five senses makes a scene come alive. The cold sticky colors dripping down an arm as we squeezed the paper cup. And white shorts, the worst thing to wear while slurping a Sno-cone. Watermelon and cherry and banana— whether the Sno-cone flavorings actually smell like the fruit they are named for, they taste that way and they evoke a scent. So I’m having my character eating a cherry Sno-cone, always my favorite.

Hot nights under the summer sky, Little League games at the park, the sound of the bell on the truck, the worry over the quarters—saved to pay for a lemon Sno-cone— that slipped through the pocket and are gone forever. Memories seep into stories and emerge as something else, another thing life has taught me about writing.

So I’m including a cold summer treat in my story, and I’ll get the details right. I’ll have to think about what to call it—a Sno-cone or a Sno-ball— but a few more trips to my new Sno-ball place, and I should have it all figured out.

The Great Fig Fiasco

I'll admit it. I'm a fig fanatic.

My sister just emailed me that her figs are almost ready. Since I've searched my own Florida neighborhood and see nothing but bushy trees and tiny fruit, I'll look forward to traveling to Mississippi in time for fig season. If I hurry, and she's vigilant, I may beat the birds to the feast.

With that on my mind, I just reread my funny fig fiasco story, the first essay I wrote for A Good Blog is Hard to Find. If you need a good laugh, or love a good fig, check it out.

Southerners have a thing for the fuzzy fruit. Whether it's the memory of playing under a grandmother's fig tree, a nice glass of something accompanied by a tasty fig and goat cheese appetizer, or a scary memory featuring glass jars of preserves lined up in the pantry, love 'em or hate 'em, we can't seem to escape figs.

Fig thoughts, anyone?

My Favorite Quotes

Blogging about them today over at my Southern Writers Group Blog. Here's a sample, from a truly terrific writer, Rick Bragg:

Someday…some Yankee photographer will drive past, see it as quaint, and put a picture of it on a coffee table book. That’s where a big part of the Old South is, on coffee tables in Greenwich Village.

Save the Cat

I never quite understood the relationship between screenwriting and novel writing.Then fellow blogger Karin Gillespie over at A Good Blog is Hard to Find recommended, actually raved about, Save the Cat. So I did what anybody trying to figure out the whole structure thing would do, I bought the book. Karin's right. Not only is is easy to read and tremendously helpful, it's written in a way that even the thickest-headed writer-by-the- seats-of-your-pants can understand.

I'll never write a screenplay, or anything other than what I'm doing right now, but the ideas in that book are worth thinking on.

A recent post by the Story Fix Guy echoed why this approach works. Screenwriting to novel writing, that is. Here's a bit of what he says. Click here to read the rest:

Some writers, especially organic writers, fear that the application of principles, rules, criteria and structural guidelines somehow suppresses the creative process and compromises the end product. That particular fear will kill your publishing dream. To publish, you need to believe the exact opposite. To publish, your story must be wildly original, creative, compelling and fresh in a way that it reinvents whatever genre you are writing in. But… you need to do all that within a box. Within the constraints of, and in disciplined accordance with, the principles of storytelling. If you don’t have complete command of those principles, you won’t publish. Because your story, however wild and compelling and fresh, won’t fly without them.

Not Millionaires...

I'm laughing while reading this posting over at the Southern Writers' Blog. Read the whole thing before deciding to take this advice because there are a lot of good things about writing, many mentioned by the end of the blog. But, still, there's truth in what poster Sarah Shaber says:

A young man at a school where I was speaking once asked me how much of the $23.95 price of my newest book did I get to keep. Oh, I said, maybe $2.00. He passed my book to another student with a look that indicated he’d be going into a different business. Novelist Lawrence Block, who’s written many books on writing, likes to tell anyone who is interested in becoming an author that they “should take two aspirins, lie down in a dark room, and hope the feeling goes away.”

Of course, don't a lot of us know that feeling's not going away any time soon, even with aspirin?

A Good Blog is Hard to Find

Every six weeks or so, my assignment over at the group blog made up of some really great Southern writers is due. Today was that day. The topic this "term" was book signings or writing process. Or whatever we want to blog about, writing wise. It's a stretch to say I wrote about my writing process. Actually, I went for the "whatever" option. Come to think about it, I could have written about book signings but that would have been from the other side of the desk, from my librarian days. Hmmm. That might be a worthy topic for next time.

Blogging, facebooking, twittering- Real Writing or Not?

I happened upon my former Skirt! Magazine colleague Kelly Love Johnson's blog about what constitutes "real" writing, or not. I've not succumbed to twittering and don't waste time worrying with my facebook account (though it is fun to see what everyone's up to!). But blogging? Her comment about blogging vs. working on an essay for publication in Actual Print- worth consideration.

I guess I'm especially thinking about this today since my turn was up at the Southern Writers' blog where I'm surrounded by some very accomplished writers and would hate to look like a poor stepsister! So I spend a lot of time on those blog entries, which are often as long as an essay and heaven forbid if I left a typo-- or worse-- in that esteemed company.

So. What do you think? Leave me a comment, anonymous or not:
What makes writing legitimate these days?

A Good Blog is Hard to Find

Well, today it's my turn over at the funny, interesting, full-of-book-and-writing-stuff blog written by some very good Southern writers. Click here to read my post. I wrote it after my Christmas travels this year and eating and holiday recipes were on my mind.
I can tell you're going to want my friend Ivy's recipe for Lime Curd. The one we had served over pound cake. Yum.
Here it is, by way of the Barefoot Contessa (I didn't have room to post it on the other blog):

LIME CURD
4 limes at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 pound butter at room temperature
4 extra-large eggs at room temperature
1/8 t. salt

Remove the zest of 4 limes. Squeeze the limes to make 1/2 cup juice.
Put the zest in a food processor, add the sugar and process for 2-3 minutes, until the zest is very finely minced.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter with sugar and lime zest. Add the eggs, one at a time, and then add the lime juice and salt. Mix until combined.
Pour the mixture into a saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring contstantly, until thickened, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat. Serve over pound cake.

The Blog #2

You can now click over to A Good Blog is Hard to Find, and if you're clever and can figure out how to scroll down to part 2 on Dec. 9, you'll see my posting about Southern words and Roy Blount and lightning and a whole bunch of other stuff. Somebody posted on the same day that I did, a mistake no doubt but I'll forgive her, so you'll get to read two on the same day. And while you're at it, scroll down to that funny one on Nov. 24th. There's a lot to read on that blog of Southern writers.