THOTS And other contributions to the state of THE UNION ? ? A Blog by Sheila Dinwiddie When I first met Sheila Dinwiddie, she was sad and writing poetry. At my house yesterday, she was looking for the theme for her life, and writing haiku. A month ago, Sheila talked to me […]
In July of 2015 a favorite pair of short, sassy, pale green leather waterproof boots finally collapsed after years of good use. The shoe repair shop down the street told me they couldn’t be fixed. Because of problems with my spine, I am very limited in the brands of shoes I can wear. In fact, […]
She was one of the most beautiful women ever to appear on screen and she epitomized the glamour of Classic Hollywood. Yet Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler to Jewish parents on Nov. 9, 1914 in Vienna, Austria was more than just a pretty face. As a young child she was fascinated by the […]
(Moving Toward the Light II watercolor on paper, 87 1/2″ x 49″ 2015) The description of Moving Toward the Light on Joseph Raffael’s website reads in part: “A major new book on the artist covering the past 17 years of his life and work in the South of France. Reproducing 88 works in rich […]
LITERARY CONTESTS: A SHORT LIST TO GET YOU STARTED The first thing I discovered when I searched online for “literary contests,” was that there are an awful lot of them. It was like shopping for toothpaste at Walgreens. I waded through, chose a few at random and, once I got started, have enjoyed the whole […]
Yes. There are competitions for short stories and essays– in case you’ve written any short stories or essays. An essay is a blog by another name, and you’re reading one right now. With some rewriting of blogs, you can produce a piece of short non-fiction, aka, an essay, and submit it all over the place. […]
A BLOG ABOUT WRITING BY ALISON DANIELS When they compile the lists of the best-selling authors of all time, Dame Agatha Christie is always either number one or second only to Shakespeare. I have never had cause to doubt it. I would think that at least one of her two very different detectives could satisfy […]
Having overcome my near paralyzing anxiety about submitting my novel to two contests, I submitted it to three, one of which I had deleted from my list two months ago because I thought their attitude was, well, snotty. Maybe snooty. All the text on their site was a flashback to the very worst days of […]
As a kind of footnote to last month’s blog about titles, I have–yes, I really have–changed the title for what I hope will be the final time. To recap: My Name is Emily Cade Ainsworth was followed by The Bustle in a House, and then by The Queens, any one of which is a perfectly adequate title. […]
My first instinct is that I am not, in fact, really “here,” by which I mean that I am only fooling myself that what I’ve written is anything even close to a completed manuscript, that actually I’ve been delusional all along as I’ve published–with a publisher and by myself–these 250-300 page books and told myself […]
