My Life in Paragraphs

What Are YOU Doing with Your New Year?

I love new years—the fresh starts, new habits, and the grand opportunity to leave a few things behind.

Every year I create challenges for myself. No one tells me to do it and there’s no great reward at the end. The stakes are basically nothing. Sometimes, I invite others to join me, which, at least on the surface, creates a little accountability.

Last year, I created the Lighten Your Load, Lighten Your Life challenge. I planned to let go of five ‘things’ every day, all year.

My Do-not-Do List

Are you a list maker?

Me, too.

There is a tiny thrill in checking things off my list.

I draw little boxes next to each item and then make a check mark (with my red pen) when I get them done. Whatever I don’t get to, but I need to, I circle in blue. Whatever I don’t get to and probably don’t really have to (but I thought I should do when I wrote the list), or now it’s too late to do, I cross off with black pen. Anal, much? Here’s what it looks like in real time:

New Book Coming in 2025!

Finally! After a three year drought, I have a new book coming out in 2025! And this one was sure worth waiting for.

Note: Maybe this is old news because you follow me on Facebook or subscribe to Another Good Dog. So if that’s the case, you have my permission to skip this blog post. Or you can read it again because, hey, this is good stuff and there’s dog pictures!

My newest book is a little different. It’s a passion project, for sure, and it’s been five years in the making. It’s also a nonprofit venture.

AI and Me (and You)

You may (or may not) have noticed that I’ve refrained from commenting or posting or engaging in discussion of AI. Initially, I just thanked my lucky stars that my kids are already grown and out of school, but secretly I really hoped this was a fad and it would go away.

It hasn’t.

Buy Me a Cup of Coffee

I only made it halfway through my Bird by Bird book club. The book sits on my desk now, taunting me. You didn’t finish, you didn’t finish, what a loser, once again, you didn’t finish. Not that, for one moment, I can imagine Anne Lamott would say that to me.

In fact, she mentions several times in the book that perfection is the oppressor. Not that only making it halfway is even remotely in the same country as perfection. Still.

The Cows Are Crying

The cows are crying. (not a sentence I ever imagined writing)

A few times a year, our little street echoes with the bellows and moans and outright wails of distressed cows. This means that one of our farmer neighbors has separated the mamas and babies, presumably so that the babies can go to be auctioned.

The sounds of the cows are heartbreaking. I doubt they know that their babies are likely destined for a slaughterhouse, but change on any level is hard.

Something Different – A Murder Mystery!

I don’t think I’m unique in my writerly tendency to find stories just about anywhere. I think it’s a human tendency. Although this one was a little different from the stories I normally tell (there were no dogs involved). It would involve police and investigators and maybe a murder mystery!

It all started on an average Sunday in which Nick and I found ourselves spending the entire day taking care of things at our two rental houses.

Our True Character

The title of the chapter is ‘False Starts’. It’s about characters, essentially, how they change the longer we hang out with them. There’s a deeper truth running through this chapter, though, one that we all can probably learn from whether we write or not.

This might be my favorite chapter in Bird by Bird. It’s super short (all the chapters are short, but this one is only four pages). And it is mostly the story of Anne visiting a nursing home for years despite the fact that she hated going there.

The nursing home illustration shows that once you strip away a person’s outer beauty and busyness, you are left with who they are at their core—and often, that’s nothing like the outer covering.

The Long and Winding Road to Publication

My most recent novel, Blind Turn, has had the longest and most winding road to publication of all my books. I looked back through my files to try to figure out when I started writing it – as best as I can tell, I began writing it in 2010.

I was inspired to think about this because it was chosen to be the Ereader News Book of the Day for this Friday, August 30. For one day it will be just 99 cents!

So, if your reason for not buying a copy has been that you don’t want to spend the money, here’s your chance to get an e-copy for less than a dollar. There’s not much you can buy for less than a buck these days, so I hope you’ll take a chance on me..]

Back to my long and winding story, which I’ll try to keep brief by sharing it in a timeline:

Setting is Real (Bird by Bird Book Club)

The next chapter in Bird By Bird is titled, “Set Design”, or in other words, setting. Setting is critical, but it can also be nauseatingly overdone (and underdone, as my sad story will reveal).

The reader needs to be able to picture your characters somewhere. And not just somewhere, but in what kind of weather? What time of day? What season of the year?