One of the two book groups I belong to consists of lawyers. (Yes, who knows why we set it up that way, but we did.) In the non-lawyer group, the participants express strong personal views about liking or disliking a book, a character, the writing style, the plot, etc., and usually listen with interest to others' impressions. The lawyer-readers comment on the same aspects of the books but are a lot more apt to pound the table and insist a particular book or author is excellent or horrible. The in...
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Author: admin
6 Things I Learned In The Last Year About Writing And Business
During much of the last fourteen years, I worked full-time--and then some--as a lawyer and wrote fiction on the side. Last year, I gradually shifted gears so that now more than half my professional life is devoted to writing and to the business side of writing. Below are a few things I've learned along the way.Get Out: Getting outside once a day, no matter what the weather, boosts my mental health. Much as writing all day at an antique desk in my home office sounds appealing when it's ten ...
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What Books Are You Thankful You Read? (Favorite Books Post No. 4)
This year has been a good year, and I have more to be thankful for than I could put into a hundred posts. So, being a writer, I figured I'd narrow it down to books. Which still could take more than a hundred posts, so I decided to write about three books: one from childhood, one from college, one from the last few years.The Lion, The Witch, and The WardrobeIn first grade, my teacher left school for several months to have a baby, and we had a wonderful substitute teacher. Every day she read to us...
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Critiquee’s Choice or The Truth About Praise and Blame
In my other life as a lawyer, my colleagues and I have a running joke. One day your client says you are the best attorney in the world, worth every penny (that would be the day you win a trial, an appeal, or a crucial motion), the next day you have no idea what you're doing and it's unbelievable you graduated law school (that would be the day the judge rules against you). Sometimes it's the same client sending those conflicting messages. As the author of Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff notes, if you...
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Why I Admire My Mom
For the 3 1/2 years I've written this blog, the post that has consistently gotten the most hits is Why I Love V.I. As the title suggests, it's about fictional female private eye V. I. Warshawski, created by Chicago-area novelist Sara Paretsky. The post's popularity tells me I'm not the only person who likes to read about strong women. The devoted fan base of books and movies like The Hunger Games and Divergent underscores that. Which is why I decided to write more posts about women, real and fic...
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Extant, Transcendence, and Who’s Talking To Whom
The concept of recent sci-fi movie Transcendence– what if a human’s brain becomes an A.I.? – fascinated me, and I enjoyed the film. What bothers me is that despite one of the two main characters being a woman, Dr. Evelyn Caster, I can’t remember, in the entire movie, any woman speaking one-on-one with any other woman. About anything. I understand men outnumber women in the hard sciences, but Evelyn has not a single woman friend to support her in a crisis? I also understand that writers can’...
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Pete Spencer Held Prisoner – Excerpt from The Unbelievers (Book 2 in The Awakening series)
Reader Kerri Geiser attended a book release party for the paperback edition of The Awakening and won the right to have a character named after her in Book 2 in the series. Below is an excerpt that includes an interchange between her character and Tara's father, Pete Spencer, from The Unbelievers, set to be released in September, 2014. These scenes occur around the middle of The Unbelievers but contain no spoilers, so feel free to read away:***Pete lay on ...
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Work, Wine, Twitter & The Hop
I've met many fun, kind and talented people through Twitter. One of them is fantasy writer Kyle Newton, whose sense of humor I love, and who tagged me in a blog hop. His blog is required reading for me when I need inspiration or want to laugh or both. As for what I'm up to (required questions for hopping):1 – What am I working on (or struggling not to work on in my version of the hop) –Here's the crazy thing I discovered - when you work for yourself, it's hard to not work. In cont...
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From My Mother’s Bookshelves (Favorite Books Post No. 3)
My mom and dad had in their bedroom three large bookcases, which I thought of as my mom’s because nearly all the books were hardbacks she’d bought from book-of-the-month clubs she’d belonged to in the 1950s and 60s. The books had a slightly musty yet dry old paper and cloth smell I love to this day. Most of them had plain cloth bindings with titles that were barely visible on the sides, as the paper jackets had fallen apart and been discarded.My favorite book on those shelves was The Elegant Wit...
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5 Ways to Be More Productive — And More Relaxed — In The New Year
Relax -- unlike some articles on productivity, the suggestions below are not meant to help you do more than you’re doing now. Instead, I hope they will help you enjoy your work more, relax more, and open up a little extra free time in the new year.1. Know your best times of day for different tasksOur brains work differently at different times of the day. Figuring out the ideal time to perform a task can make it more enjoyable and lessen the amount of time you spend on it. Most people are m...
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