So this is my 25th and last LJ entry. I have tried for almost a year and a half to find, for lack of a better description, my blogging voice. I’m a fair to good writer and I work insanely hard at all new things, but this just didn’t take.

I will continue to read other people’s LJs with interest and admiration. If you want news of me, please go to ( Read more... )

Because I am too old to feel truly comfortable blogging, I never update right away, but prefer to sit on things, wondering if they merit a post. People blog to make friends (I am a writer -- if I wanted friends, would I have become one?) or to announce things (I have old-fashioned ideas about privacy, what with being old and all).
But it has ( Read more... )

So this was my second time at ALAN/NCTE and, honestly, I really don’t know what any of that stands for, except I do think ALAN might be the name of a literary journal and NCTE is an organization of English teachers.

I should ask someone. Well, maybe if I get invited back.
I have no pictures and no breathless blogging type entries along the ( Read more... )

I normally have a life about as eventful as that of a painted wall drying, but suddenly I have events coming up. And my work is full of new things. I am revising a mss with a new editor. Her name, in my house at least, is Julia Whom We Love. She apparently has a real name, and children, and many other writers, but in my world right now she ( Read more... )

We* went to see a screening of Lars and the Real Girl tonight, and it was one of those movies that forced you to notice the writing. Unlike Little Miss Sunshine, which I though of as actor-proof (i.e., a script so tightly put together, no one could screw it up), the script for Lars & TRG is like its hero -- fragile and extremely vulnerable to ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

“Hitler and Stalin were my travel agents.”
   -- Charles Simic

There’s poetry and then there’s magic. That throwaway comment stopped my heart. Among the other things they do, poets give regular writers a way to rest their brains. It was Brad Kessler who said that reading poetry was safe while writing prose. I recently read John Ash’s " ( Read more... )

I drink tea all day and love the fuss involved (the pot, the tray, the pretty cup, the little spoon), but in the morning I have to have coffee. It’s in my DNA. My father’s family is from Austria and my morning wake-up has to be black and strong. Or a latte with an extra shot.

I am late to this party, I know, but I finally have a French Press ( Read more... )

A grande dame died tonight. I know she was an opera star, but she managed to be so much more. She didn’t just give money to her cause, she gave of herself.

“I really do believe I can accomplish a great deal with a big grin, I know some people find that disconcerting, but that doesn't matter.”


( Read more... )

We were not allowed to watch anything but Walter Cronkite when I was growing up, so I fear TV almost as much as I enjoy it.

One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of people who are writers or who work with books, blog about TV shows. Some writer/book types are very funny and witty on the topic (see Literaticat’s brilliant take on a reality show about the ( Read more... )