Alternate title: You want me to drive where?? So over the holiday weekend, the fam and I went camping. It was the first camping trip for our now 4-month-old puppy, Brin. She is in the tent pic. It’s a “when you see it” kind of thing. I’m sharing this because the real story is in…
How are you all faring in our social distancing efforts? Fortunately, cabin fever is the only type of fever affecting my family. We were going for walks if possible, but today’s weather looks like this. Happy first day of spring. So as I was scrolling through twitter and wondering what to do with my time,…
So this happened last night. The 14yo brainstormed ideas while the 11yo drew them. Now, because my children are my children, a silly idea like that quickly grows into something possibly ridiculous but definitely funny. And because their mother is me, the ridiculous, funny thing gets blog treatment. Ergo, I bring you… The Adventures of…
It happened again last Friday evening, though I can’t say I’m sad about it. My family and I were watching a movie together in the darkened family room. We had blankets and pillows. It was all very cozy. I decided to stretch out on half of the couch, where I snuggled deep in my blanket.…
Some of you have met my alter-ego on Twitter, Bad Writer. She spends her days dishing out ill-advised writing tips and telling anecdotes about writing that come from her probably missing her calling. That tweet is her current pinned tweet, the one that stays at the top of her timeline. Tweeps pin tweets so thoughtful…
Things don’t always go the way you plan. This is a tale of that very lesson. We have two cats: Lily and Meeker. Lily is small and sweet and afraid of everything. Meeker is big, in charge, and loves to go outside. Meeker loves going outside so much that he doesn’t care who he has…
Today, Dan shared this post from Writer’s Write, the entirety of which was this image. It’s a list of 115 ways to say “walk.” I’m all for synonyms and lists of synonyms. Especially for my crutch words (variations of look, for example), sign me the frick up for synonym lists. My characters can only do…
Have you noticed this trend, especially in sci-fi or superhero movies? I think I first noticed it with Ronan in Guardians of the Galaxy. But after that, I started noticing it other places. How about Darth Vader? Or even the “queen” dragon in How to Train Your Dragon. I’m not talking about motivations, or back…
Can a writer plagiarize their own work? Because I kinda managed to do that. It wasn’t a whole story or a premise or a character. It was a short setting description. I knew the moment I wrote it in my current work-in-progress that I’d written it before. It was a favorite line. Seeing as I…
Sixteen days ago, I went out to dinner with some friends. One of them told me about a TED talk she’d seen about how long it takes to learn a skill. We were talking about the 10,000 hours to achieve mastery statistic, I think, and my friend disagreed. “Twenty hours to proficiency,” she said. Yeah,…
Allison Maruska 