How to Write

4OURRGDU7Z

I’ve been writing a novel since the beginning of time. Okay, perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration, but it sure feels like it. In actuality, I started it in 1999 and have been working on it, on and off, for twelve years or so. It’s all kinda fuzzy.

And I’m only about 160 pages in, so take my advice with a single molecule of salt.

The How

Start with a clean space. Spic and span. Not a grain of dust. Get out your Swiffer and, quite literally, go to town. Buy fresh flowers and spend six hours arranging them flawlessly. Run to Bed Bath & Beyond in your pajama bottoms and 2 XL tee. Peruse the Yankee Candle aisle, picking each jar up by its bottom (you don’t want to have to buy all that broken shit), and smell each fragrance until you find the one that matches your flower arrangement. Go home, take two Excedrin to rid yourself of the fume headache that likely ensued. Take a nap.

It’s not like I spent that whole eleven years writing every day. I spent twelve years getting my education. I spent a few years drinking Jim Beam and Jagermeister. Mixed. I spent some time on a tractor at a Journey concert. I’ve been busy. Read more

Wrestling with Breast Cancer

yay-1561488edit

As I sit here drinking my sixth cup of java my best friend, Monica Wilcox, is walking sixty grueling miles across San Francisco with a gnarly head cold.  It’s hard for me to fathom putting foot to pavement like that when I have to motivate myself to rise and patter to the coffee pot each morn, but she’s been inspired to help put an end to breast cancer.  So, when Save the Ta-tas – an organization simply slathered in Awesome – asked me to be a guest blogger for Breast Cancer Awareness month I knew this was my unique chance to help women and earn a pink ribbon while still drinking my coffee.

I like boobs. I’m particularly attached to my own but I’ve never had breast cancer.  I’ve only known a few tough birds who’ve had it and they knocked it on its ass. However, I have had to strike a bargain with thyroid cancer and that’s close enough for me.  Not to mention that I once found a lump in my breast and had to lay on an ultrasound table while a stoic technician squirted cold goo on my chest and proceeded with a New York style photoshoot sans heavy make-up or the pretty poses. Don’t think for a moment that I wasn’t laying there mentally arranging the calla lilies at my funeral and picturing my family keeling over in grief. Fortunately, for me, I’m just cyst-y. Read more