The Writing Craft
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Write on the Back Burner
A Meditation for When You Feel Stuck in Your Writing I grew up surrounded by my mother’s big family in the northeastern reaches of Appalachia. Mother and her eight siblings were products of the Depression — hard-shelled, thrifty people who remembered what it was like to go hungry and live without warm clothing and well-fitting… Continue reading
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Dr. Rick, Can You Help Me? I’m Becoming My Mother
Aunt Peach used to tell me I was Daddy’s girl. When I was a child, she reminded me often that I looked like my father. “It’s good luck for a little girl to look like her daddy,” she said. At the very least, I suppose, it suggested that her mother had stayed on the straight-and-narrow,… Continue reading
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After I Retired, I Hit a ‘Reminisence Bump’ in the Road
Shortly after I retired, I started to smell my mother in my house. Her signature scent-mix of Estee Lauder’s Youth Dew and Suave hairspray hung subtly on the air as if she had just passed through my living room. Though she has been dead for 10 years, I had the sensation that she had just… Continue reading
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What Ina Garten Doesn’t Understand about a Writer’s Audience Awareness
I love her Company Pot Roast recipe. Her cocktails are delectable. And her desserts — well, her Outrageous Brownies alone should earn her a standing ovation. On her Food Network show, The Barefoot Contessa, her casual, conversational instructions for preparing dishes that are both simple and elegant delight her many fans. And her repeated declarations of… Continue reading
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Another ‘Bad Mother’ Memoir
As the daughter of a bad mother, I admit that I am drawn to memoirs in which a child dishes dirt on a parent. When I saw the title of Molly Jong-Fast’s recently published book How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir, I suspected that, like Jennette McCurdy in I’m Glad My Mother Died,… Continue reading
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Charting a Writing Path
My daughter Sarah once told me, “You can solve any problem if you make a chart.” I have tested that claim several times. I’ve been testing it lately as I work on an e-book project on the essentials of good writing. What is good writing? How do writers achieve it? I am hoping to offer whatever wisdom… Continue reading
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
If so, this blog is for you.
Person on the Page 