Tag: writing

Demystifying Gender Identity

June 2, 2015
Personal, Writing

I SAT DOWN TO WORK this morning and found myself unable to concentrate. I’ve been so surprised by some of the negative reactions to Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover that I was compelled to write this. It seems a lot of us are confused about what’s going on in the media with regard to transgender...

SYMPTOMS Preview + My Pre-writing Ritual

May 30, 2015
Video, Writing

MAY’S VIDEO BLOG FEATURES a preview of my forthcoming debut novel, Symptoms of Being Human, plus a peek at my Pre-Writing Ritual and a visit by my cat, Dottie.

Star Wars vs. Catcher in the Rye

April 24, 2015
Fiction, Personal, Writing

LAST WEEKEND, IN AN ATTEMPT to get organized, I bought a file cabinet and went through all the boxes in my garage. Instead of becoming organized, however, I spent Saturday assembling the most complex piece of Ikea furniture known to man, and them I spent Sunday reading through all the writing stuff...

8 Terrible Titles

November 7, 2014
Writing

I’ll be totally honest with you: I didn’t know what a Blog Hop was until I got tagged in this one. I imagined a bunch sci-fi fans in poodle skirts slow dancing to Jonathan Coulton in the dim purple glow of a thousand MacBook Pros. While I totally think that should still happen, turns...

How Spell Check Tried To Sabotage My Novel

September 25, 2014
Personal, Writing

Spell Check (c) 2011 Michael Mandiberg On Sunday night, I was almost ready to turn in the second draft of my debut novel, SYMPTOMS OF BEING HUMAN. While I was rewriting, I kept thinking of how I might share the process with you, my dear reader. I have always enjoyed the commentary tracks and blooper...

3 Ways To Manage Your Creative Misery

August 20, 2014
Writing

Writing a book (or a song, or a blog post) is an exercise in doing things you don’t know how to do yet. The yet is very important–because creating isn’t just putting the words in the right order to tell the story, it’s figuring out what the story is in the first place, and then figuring out...