"Do what you love," they say, "and the rest will follow." It is simple, almost obvious advice, but so easy to forget. I love to teach, I love to hike, do yoga, cuddle my dogs, hang out with my kids, and listen to great music. All those things and many more fulfill me and give my life meaning, but there is another, less worldly endeavor that strengthens, fills and enriches me, and that is the relationship I have with my writing. This passionate relationship may not look like much from the outside, but as we who work in the trade know, it's as vital to survival as air, food and water. I don't know how other writers feel; all I know is that writing completes me. Maybe it’s because I grew up an only child, spent so much time alone, daydreaming the hours away. Or maybe it’s because I have found in writing a way to connect with other souls, to squash the loneliness and sort through the bouts of existential angst. Like most loves, the source of my devotion to m...

Photo by Ali West , via Flickr I’ve never been a tidy person. My car, my bathroom counter, and my office all attest to how difficult it is for me to organize things and make choices between what to keep and what to throw away. I often don’t have the time or patience to deal with all those pesky tasks. Unfortunately, in my writing, it’s much the same. I’m fine with dumping down a long, rambling random draft, somehow finding a structure to hang it on, but I always seem to leave a lot of proverbial socks sticking out of my drawers. In writing, as in life, I can make a mess, no problem. What I struggle with is cleaning it up. I’ve been working on a new project, one I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years. I started in earnest in October, and since it’s based on a true story, I have an overload of possible scenes and ideas. There’s probably no way it’s all going to fit into a cohesive, completed whole, but, since I believe in the method of making a mess and cleaning it up, I do...

Photo by Paul Downey , via Flickr This is the month of thank yous, the season of gratitude. Even though a writer’s life is not an easy one, we still have plenty to be grateful for. At the top of my list are books, writing communities, and publishers. A visiting magazine editor once told a room full of writers at a panel on publishing that in order to succeed a writer needs do three things besides write. We all sat up straighter and strained our ears to hear. The magic ingredients, she told us, were 1) to read many, many great books, especially in the genre we were writing, 2) to join and participate in writing communities such as the conference we were all attending, and 3) to send out our work to contests, editors, and agents, in the hopes they would help us get published. It sounded like a lot of work, but it was nice to have a formula for “success,” whatever that was, so I took it to heart. I got busy and added to my writing practice as much reading, workshopping, and submit...