The Write Place
Here you will find everything to do with writing, whether it is my writing or what I'm learning from reading books on writing. Reading, vocabulary, and grammar are the tools of the trade. The very best people to learn from are the ones who are seasoned writers who teach writing. You would be wise to enlist them as your mentors, as I have.
- In: The Write Place
No, that isn't a misspelling of the word Sudoku, the numbers game. Tsundoku is Japanese and means, "acquiring reading material and letting them pile up in one's home without reading them". For years I've called myself a bibliophile which is "a person who collects and has a great love of books". That is still me, too, but now I have a new term to describe the hundreds of books in bookcases lining the walls of my basement, my living room, my studio.
I find it fascinating that everything we do, no matter how unique it may see to us, and even if no one in our circle of friends and family ever encountered anyone else who did this unusual thing that you do, you can be assured that someone else out there does it, and there is a name for it. That was definitely how I felt when I heard a contestant on Jeopardy not only say the name "Tsundoku" but Alex Trebek agreed he, too, suffered the same affliction.
To me there is no such thing as owning too many books.
- In: The Write Place
We all have different writing styles and what works best for us. Some writers have to have complete silence while others work best in a busy cafe. What we use to write our stories is also an individual choice. I often start getting ideas and, without a computer close-by, will jot them down in a notebook. Sometimes I will actually start the story and then when more and more ideas come to me and I have hand-written four or five pages of barely decipherable pages, I will switch to my computer and add the pages. From that moment on, I will continue with the story on the computer. The computer is much neater than my hand writing, particularly once I get moving on the story and then cross out and write a paragraph below and draw an arrow here to there.
- In: The Write Place
On March 19, that's just 4 days away, spring begins. Winter over, I already see the signs of spring in the return of several birds to my neighborhood, the crocuses that are not only pushing up from the dirt but that have also opened with the tulips and jonquils not far behind, plus the buds appearing on the tips of many trees that surround our home in rural New Hampshire. Now is the time to start clearing away the old dried plants and weeds from around the yard, trimming bushes, and preparing for new growth all around. And this year, unlike previous years, I won't be in such a hurry to get away from those duties and instead get out to visit with friends because as we all know by now, it is in our best interest to stay home and away from others who may be infected with the COVID 19 virus. More deadly than any we have known in some time and taken right off the screen of a Hollywood movie we are hunkering down and taking care of ourselves and staying indoors. Perfect time to get down to business with my writing and actually complete another book or two since that is my immediate goal.
- In: The Write Place
I am always one who believes there is always more that I need to know about a subject and that can't be more true than with writing. I often feel I must go back to the beginning learning or relearning the fundamentals in any given topic before I put pen to paper. So when I saw 'Craft of Writing' for Free as a Kindle download on BookGorilla, I couldn't push the Buy Now button fast enough on Amazon.
- In: The Write Place
Just last year I decided it was time to put an end to 'arts and crafts' shows that I had been participating in for several years. When I was painting exclusively (not writing at the time), I participated in the outdoor "Artists in the Park" shows, lugging E-Z Up tents, panels, tables, a vast assortment of originals and prints and a number of other items to spend the day, after a 2 hour drive, hoping to sell enough to cover the cost of the space I paid to rent. If I didn't have the help of my husband, I never would have done this alone. Just a few years ago I decided it was time to be done with outdoor shows. You hoped for a nice day and if it rained and decided not to go you were out the $$$ with no chance of trying to recoup the cost.