The blank page is every writer’s closed door. Even though I know what I’m writing about, I’m often stuck at how I want to tell the story. Sometimes I find myself banging on that closed door for hours, screaming “let me in!” Over decades of a writing career, I’ve learned this is an exercise in […]
I’ve never thought much about how different people approach reading horror stories. After all, I don’t write scary stories. But I recently attended an event celebrating the Centennial Anniversary of the Poe Museum in Richmond, Va., and someone posed the question: What kind of story gives children goosebumps? What type frightens a teenager? I’m sure […]
What’s the fastest way a journalism major can fail an assignment in news writing class? Spell a proper name incorrectly. As far as my journalism school professors were concerned, misspelling your interviewee’s name was a cardinal sin – and it earned an automatic F. It didn’t matter if your reporting was stellar, if the piece […]
Early this summer, my foot twisted on a bumpy edge of pavement, sending me sprawling. Goofily, I might add. This humiliating incident happened at our local farmers’ market, just moments after we’d stopped at a food truck. The last thing I saw before I hit the ground were multiple layers of my breakfast sandwich sailing […]
For someone who thrives on storytelling, I live in bountiful times. Traditional media – books, radio, and television – have fed me for most of my life. But in the last few years I find myself taking more and more bites from an ever-growing and overflowing buffet. Streaming TV and YouTube offer new ways to […]
