I’d like to step away from character selection today and get back to the subject of our aching, whining, Wrists-That-Shall-Not-Be-Ignored. For those of us who suffer repetitive motion injury, here are a few tips that may make life more keyboard-friendly:

You can help prevent injury by making sure that your setup and equipment are appropriate for [...]

Continuing with my discussion of character development, I’d like to discuss those lesser characters … you know, the folks who drop by now and then to say howdy, only to leave a package of misery for your main character to rise above, and then smile their way on out the door.

I’d like to especially talk [...]

I’ve talked recently of character development and how their development processed through my first two novels. Naively, the structure of the characters in those works came easily; they simply presented themselves within the framework of this writer’s vivid imagination. I’m curious, however, how other writers select character qualities. What do you do to bring forth [...]

I recently had dinner with friends who wanted to know how I make up characters in my writing. I don’t remember the more-than-likely lame answer I gave them about making fictional composites of people and personalities … blah, blah, blah.  I probably blathered on about rainbows and kittens just to avoid what has [...]

I’ll never forget the day I trotted out the first pages of my story, All the Dancing Birds, only to be met with howls of disbelief from my writer’s group. “Nice writing, Auburn, but the viewpoint is wrong.” “You can’t possibly write from the viewpoint of someone who has Alzheimer’s disease!” “How can you put [...]

Every day, there’s a question that rolls around under my skin, and makes me nearly crazy with its implications, its insinuations, its persistence. It’s a simple question – not much to it, really. This inquest contains only two words. Nevertheless, it squirrels around every fiber of my being until I finally sit in front of [...]

My mother grew rhubarb in her Portland garden; she planted it on mounds of dirt along the fence where it she said it got the most sun. Now and then during the summer, she would pull on her gloves and snip off a number of long, red stalks to make that evening’s dessert — rhubarb [...]

Would anyone mind if I tossed in a piece of poetry now and then? If I shared a bit of that cloud that occasionally comes by and snags on the corner of my mind?
I suppose no one will object. My only regular visitor is my husband … and I MAKE him read my posts, the [...]

Scents trigger in me a visceral, down-in-the-gut immediacy. I smell the meat of a cracked-open walnut, and I’m immediately nine years-old and swinging my legs over a low branch on the walnut tree that grew in the backyard of my home in Portland, Oregon. Wave a bottle of Chanel No. 5 under my nose, and [...]

At the bidding of my doctor, I’m taking the day off to rest the old wrists.  May I be the first to say, wrist-resting is hard for a Type-A.  Grrrrr.
My best to you all,
Auburn