Let’s DEWEY This! – the 600s

I’m deeply attached to relics from my childhood. A ragged teddy bear with a lost leg, looking like it just got back from war. A bathrobe with embroidered stars and way-too-short sleeves for my now-adult arms. A ballerina music box that got damaged in a move, the dancer now bent sideways, musicless.

Those relics I kept a long time, and I still have many others, but eventually space demanded that I sever a few mementos. It was painful throwing them away. Like I was throwing away pieces of my life. All the years of owning them had imbued them with memory and feeling, and to see them in the garbage or give-away box hurt my heart.

This experience is common; many people can relate. Now imagine having that same depth of attachment towards every object in your home. Bubblegum wrappers. Broken appliances. Newspapers. Imagine if tossing an old take-out menu filled you with the same loss as tossing your teddy bear.

That’s how the people feel in Randy Frost’s and Gail Steketee’s compassionate book, “Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things,” DD# 616.85227 – this month’s Dewey Decimal Discovery pick from the section on health.

All Night Long

I light the last candle, turning to see the bed now cast in a soft golden glow. Saxophone music plays in the background. Lounging seductively upon its petal-sprinkled sheets is the book.

How to frustrate a writer: “Where’s the hook?”

Writers talk a lot about hooks-the thing in a story’s opening that grabs the reader and makes them want to continue. It’s a popular question among writing groups when critiquing a first page or scene: “Where’s the hook?”

This can be… frustrating.

The problem is that critiquers often don’t treat the term like the broad, vague thing that it is, which makes their critiques broad, vague, and unhelpful. First I’m going to explain how hooks are subjective, and then how to make your critique more beneficial to the writer.

Gonna karate chop these edits into completion!

To celebrate our 5-year anniversary in a few months, my boyfriend Craig and I are traveling to French Polynesia. Yesterday was a very badass-feeling day of scheduling. Flights booked – kapow! Hotel booked – kapow!

And amidst all that, somehow I ended up with a deadline for completing my book’s revisions. Extra-kapow!