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As you may have noticed, I’ve been more than lax in my blog posts since last spring.  At first I was too busy with the sex book to think about blogging.  Then, after I turned in the manuscript on May 1, I was just plain all “wrote out.”  The book took everything I had to give, emotionally and physically.  More than three months later, I’m still all “wrote out.”  I can barely tap out a word.  But I feel I owe you a fe

I recently mentioned on Facebook that I have a fantasy of seeing someone on the beach reading one of my books.  Perhaps that’s not a fantasy you’d expect from a woman who has spent the past five years researching sex.  But I think it is a fantasy of many writers of books.  And since I am, first and foremost, a writer of books, … well, you get the idea. So, this morning, I opened Facebook and found t

The day after I emailed my sex book to my editor in New York, I had so much I wanted to blog about.  Ideas and words kept popping into my head.  But I wouldn’t let myself write them because I felt I needed to take the day off.  The previous four months had been long, hard, and stressful – editing and rewriting my own work under a tight deadline, along with editing and coaching others, teaching, prepping for and going

Maybe it’s because I’m “sensitive.”  That’s what my family always complained about me.  My favorite professor said my sensitivity is what makes me a good writer. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer and words are important to me, powerful to me.  Just a few moments ago, I heard a poem on the radio, Puttanesca by Michael Heffernan.  The words that caught my ears were simple —

I don’t know where to start.  That’s not a very good thing for a writer to say.  Even if we don’t know where to start, we usually write until we know where to begin. But finding where to begin takes time.  It takes lots of typing and retyping.  Rearranging.  Starting over.  And finding our way again.  I don’t have time to do that.  There’s a book to write.  There’s freelance work that’s due.   And I’m constantly dist

Some people have to force themselves to not think about sex. I have to force myself to think about sex.

Hear that tapping?  It’s my fingers … as I wait … and wonder … when my editor is going to call.  This is what it’s like for writers … waiting.  Even published writers.  Wondering.  Maybe it’s not that way for writers like Nelson DeMille.  But for those of us in the middle, it’s tapping fingers … anxiously waiting … maddeningly waiting. My editor was supposed to call me on February 1.  She didn’t.  I let it slide.  Pr

My blog generates frequent comments, though they’ve never shown up here.  Most often they’re posted on Facebook.  Sometimes, they arrive in my private email box.  A few days ago, I received what I felt was a powerful response to my Working Through the Struggle post.  That’s the one where I quoted award-winning novelist Joe O’Connell.  The response was so powerful that I asked its author if I could post the comment he

I just watched my postman unload the neighborhood’s mail from the back of a silver, C-class Mercedes Benz. ... That postman used to deliver the mail in a beat-up, dark green station wagon.