Kiss Your Frogs*

It happens to every writer: sloppy, rambling, unintelligible, boring writing that is going anywhere but where you want. It’s the frog-kissing phenomenon of creative writing and it happens to the best of us, even to seasoned pros. If you write at all, know that you’re going to produce some stuff that’s way to the left of good, lopsided and croaking on some withering lily pad.

First-draft writing doesn’t have to be good, it won’t always be good, and even when it is good, among the good will be some not-so-good. For many writers, understanding and accepting this has a powerfully freeing effect. Writing teacher and author Natalie Goldberg says, “You’re free to write the worst junk in America.” Anne Lamott also has a name for that rough stuff we all write. She calls it “shitty first drafts.” It’s the swampy, mucky stuff that holds little promise for happily-ever-after, and almost every writer experiences a day when muck is what gets written.

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You Gotta Have a Gimmick. Making Connections at a Book Festival

Last Saturday I spent the day with 20,000 other readers and writers at the Union-Tribune Book Festival—an all-day literary extravaganza at Liberty Station. There, in Authors Alley, I shared a table with my dear friend and sister writer, Jill G. Hall. Her half of our eight-foot table graced by her beautiful books and a pair of silver shoes, and my half littered with a couple of my books and a small replica of a typewriter.

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Invoking the Muse

We writers are a quirky lot with our habits, superstitions, and idiosyncrasies—whatever we believe it takes to get the attention of the muse or elicit inspiration. I have a friend who has a particular hat… another friend who insists on a certain pen… one who places a goofy little figure beside her computer while she writes and puts it away again when she’s done. And oh there are so many others.

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