Author: Alice Valdal (Page 1 of 34)

Here, There, and Everywhere

March 5, 2025 / Alice Valdal / 0 Comments

Last month I published a post here about etyology — the study of the origins of words. Since then it seems I stumble over etyology, linguistics, syntax, idioms and the like at every turn. Even a book on music is talking about the rhythm and cadence of words as a tool to understanding how music affects our brains. Running into this same concept over and over might be called the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon, or frequency illusion.

Writers often discuss experiencing this phenomenon when they have an idea for a new story. Our creative juices my be sludgy and opaque for weeks, months or even years, then we get an idea, or even just the glimmer of an idea. Suddenly, we see that idea playing out all around us. On the flip side, it seems several authors get a similar idea at the same time. Is it something in world events that triggers a common notion? Is there really a god-like muse at play who plants a thought in a dozen minds to see if it will grow?

I can’t answer that question, but I do know I’ve been running into language delights everywhere for the past few weeks. Here are a few instances:

At Bible Study, we heard about Jesus’ visit to Jericho. It would appear that Jericho, both ancient and modern, is a nice place.”Why then,” I asked, “do we ‘wish someone to Jericho’ when we want them to go away to a not nice place?” No one but me knew the expression but I had read it in the works of L.M. Montgomery. So I looked it up and here is what I found.

The expression “go to Jericho” comes to us from the Old Testament where it appears as a command by King David to his mistreated and dishonored envoys to King Hānun of the Ammonites. At some point, however—perhaps by the middle of the eighteenth century, to judge from the examples in Farmer & Henley, cited above—English speakers began to use it euphemistically to say “go to hell.” The expression may have persisted in some corner of the English-speaking world, but it does not appear to be in general use today. Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present

My next example came while watching the Canadian Men’s Curling Championships, known as “The Brier.” An announcer used the phrase “the straw that stirs my drink.” The other broadcasters were flummoxed, never having heard the expression before. So, once again, I looked it up and found

The most valuable or important person or thing in a system. The phrase is usually attributed to baseball player Reggie Jackson. At the time it was viewed as a boastful commentary about his importance that ruined his relationship with other players.

My last example is a simile rather than an idiom but the colourful language appealed to me. A book describing a woman trying to make a living on a stony, neglected farm said “she worked as hard as three sled dogs.” Anyone who has seen a team of sled dogs towing heavy loads, while running at speed can understand the reference.

Using idioms and colourful phrases can distinguish an author’s voice, make her prose memorable, and add a sense of place and time to the writing. But such devices should be used sparingly. Too many and the work becomes a caricature. Sometimes that is the aim — think “Hee Haw”– but readers can be easily turned off if the language becomes hackneyed and trite. Think of idioms in your prose like salt in your stew — a little is essential, too much spoils it.

New Look at Morning Pages

February 19, 2025 / Alice Valdal / 0 Comments

VIRA

Last week my romance writers group, VIRA, held our Valentine’s brunch. It was a great time. Since COVID we’ve met mostly on-line so it was a real treat to meet up in person with my “tribe.” The room was loud, the laughter plentiful, encouraging words filled the air. And that brings me to morning pages.

Writing Workshop

When I first began this writing journey, I diligently wrote morning pages because Julia Cameron said to, and so did Bobbi Hutchinson, the presenter at the very first romance writing workshop I attended. She said, “if you don’t know what to write, start with I remember . . .” I revelled in those pages, enjoying the flow of words from my brain to my pen, playing with story ideas, creating characters who might or might not show up in a story. I practiced being a writer.

Menopause

But time passed, my writing time got shorter and my career stalled. Menopause gave me the gift of brain fog and stole half my vocabulary. Morning pages seemed a waste of time. It was so hard to drag words from my brain that I elected to use them only in my stories. And writing became all work and no play. As the years passed, I wrote less and less. My “career” died.

Joy Cometh in the Morning

That brings me back to the VIRA party. I’d been keeping my “shameful” secret — the one about not writing — hidden from my writing colleagues. But, at the party, I told the truth. No one scorned me or pointed fingers. Instead, an old mentor suggested I write about something that I have held dear all my life. “I see passion there,” she said. She was right. I’ve gone back to writing pages– sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon — in order to tell a story about myself that makes me smile, or weep, and sometimes elicits a wry chuckle. The words are coming easier — not elequent, but serviceable. I look forward to time at my desk rather than avoiding it. I don’t even think about publishing or having a career. For now, I am thrilled to pick up my pen and write two hundred words that bring me joy.

Society’s greatest loss during COVID lockdowns was companionship. We all huddled in our corners. We did our best to substitute technology for human interaction. We wore masks, got vaccinated and did our level best to stay healthy. But that was then. This is now. For myself, and many others, the time has come to engage with human beings, friends or strangers. Ordering on-line is quick and easy, but grumbling about the weather with a store clerk is much more satifying to the psyche. And, having real, live-person chats with other writers is one of the best things an author can do for herself.

What about you, dear readers. Have you found your way back into the company of fellow humans? Do you avoid crowds or do you seek out like-minded enthusiasts and spend time together? How is your choice working out for you? I hope that whatever path you choose, you find joy in your days.

International Women's Day

Name that Word

February 5, 2025 / Alice Valdal / 0 Comments

As a writer, I’m fascinated with words. I love the way they sound. I love the weird spellings of the English language. I even have a list of “beautiful words” that includes lilac, haze, mauve, sigh, lullaby, lily, sly. . . Notice how many soft consonants are in my list. Maybe it is that melodic (another favourite word) sound tht marks them as beautiful in my mind.

Among my favourite books are Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman, and Pip Williams’ The Dictionary of Lost Words. Both tell of the development of an English dictionary, how words were discovered and researched and used and, eventually, added to our word list.

The study of words, and particularly their origin is called “etyology,” not to be confused with “entomology” which is the study of insects. Notice the “ology” in both words. It means study of. Hence theology, astrology, geology, biology . . . etc.

Obviously, I could go on forever about words, but what caught my attention recently was the number of words (usually nouns) in our language that are actually the name of a person. Did you know the word “Hansom” as used in a “Hansom Cab” is named for James Hansom (handsome), an English engineer who designed the vehicle?

Nathaniel Bigot (1575 -1660) was a Puritan preacher born in Ipswich. His intolerance and zeal were such that none of the sects of the Puritan religion would admit him to membership. He frequently stood up and began preaching at the Globe theatre during Shakespeare’s plays, railing against the vanity and depravity he perceived on the stage. For his pains, he was ejected from the theatre. A supporter of Cromwell, even that dour dogmatic found Bigot a nuisance and had him arrested. He was a staunch Parliamentarian who called for the execution of Charles I. He died of apoplexy when he saw Charles II entering London at the time of the Restoration. It is questionable whether his name was given to our word, “bigot” but he certainly embodied its meaning!

I’ve always considered gingham a very homey, wholesome pattern, but one source tells me that Martha Gingham (1580-1648) was a bawdy-house keeper who dressed her “girls” in clean petticoats and neat frocks of striped or checked cloth. So much for my preconceived notion!

Don’t forget the fourth Earl of Sandwich who bestowed his name on the snack we eat between slices of bread. There are several stories about him. In one, he is credited with sponsoring Captain James Cook’s voyages. In gratitude, Cook named the Sandwich Islands in his honour. In a less flattering story, the earl, who was an inveterate gambler, didn’t want to interupt his play to eat. He created the sandwich so he could eat without getting his fingers greasy, and thus remain at the card table.

There are endless examples of men and women giving their names to the language. The examples I’ve cited are historical, but just think of how we use “Google” as a verb. A Shirley Temple is a non-alcoholic drink, Reaganomics, an economic theory named after a former president of the United States, or Scrooge to describe a miser.

The study of words provides endless fascination for a wordsmith. I’d love to hear your favourite words, just add them to the comments section of this post.

5 Body Language Surprises

January 22, 2025 / Alice Valdal / 0 Comments

I had a very strange start to the year — I lost my voice. I don’t mean I lost my ability to sing or declaim from the stage. I mean I lost the ability to make any sound using my vocal cords. (Aphonia) Never happened to me before and was, frankly, scary. Here’s how.

I couldn’t call for help. If I fell in a ditch, I couldn’t cry out. I had to attract attention by banging things, or throwing things, or physically assaulting my hearers. Not an efficient way to get help quickly.
By the same token, I couldn’t sound a warning. When I saw danger approaching someone else, I could not call out an alarm. It made me feel helpless and culpable in another’s misfortune.
My sense of identity suffered. I am a singer, my voice has always been an important part of my make-up. To suddenly be silenced struck at the core of my self-confidence.
I was isolated. I could not carry on a conversation. Meeting with friends left me feeling left out since I could not participate in the exchange of news and ideas.
I couldn’t use the telephone. When my brother called from 2000 miles away, I couldn’t even say hello. How disappointing is that?

Writers often study body language as a means of making their words on the page more powerful. Well, being mute for three days, I had lots of time to practice body language! I got a stiff neck from all the nodding and head-shaking. My eyeballs rolled up and down so often they needed a massage. My mother told me it was impolite to point, but I pointed at everything, big, stabbing, forefinger pointing. How else could I tell my husband to feed the cat?

Surprises

I referenced surprises in the title of this post.

Here is the first one. As a writer I’m familiar with the importance of body language in our fiction. On the page, we use things like “pursed lips” or “clenched fists” or “narrowed eyes” to convey mood or emotion. In real life, those cues are too small to make up for the lack of words. If no one is looking, pulling your lips into a prune shape accomplishes nothing but to create facial lines. Maggie Lawson talks about “amplifying” important moments in a novel. She adds metaphor and cadence to amplify those pursed lips. i.e. “She pursed her lips so tightly I thought she might choke.”
Voice is elusive. We are born able to make sound, even if it is just a wail. Every day of my life, I have had a voice — until I didn’t. In writing, the author’s “voice” is just as necessary and just as hard to define. It is that indefinable something that marks a passage as unique to that particular writer. Stephen Sondheim and Oscar Hammerstein II used the same notes of the scale, but the music – voice – they produced was entirely different. It is that distinction that marks an author’s voice.
Characters have voice. Here the possibilities for a writer are endless. We can speak of specific characteristics like a “gravelly voice” or a “breathless whisper” or “as shrill as nails on a chalkboard.” But once we have decided on a defining trait for our character’s voice, we need to stick to it. Just as a baby can recognize his mother’s voice, we want our readers to recognize the voice of a character without having to use dialogue tags. What a protagonist says and how he says it, should identify him. If the hero and the villain sound the same, the story needs a rewrite.
Authors can use speech, or lack of it, to advance the plot. When I was mute, I was easily overlooked in group settings. Just like the servants in a Regency novel, I was invisible, discounted. If you write a story about a woman who struggles with self-confidence, make her silent in a crowd. She’ll have plenty of time to observe and won’t be seen as a threat to anyone. Think Miss Marple.
Life experience is a marvellous teacher. Until I lost my voice I’d never considered the implications of being mute. I expect life experiences used in fiction to be huge–earth-shattering, monumental –things like life and death and love. But small things have consequences. Those small things just might be the trigger to lift your writing to the next level.

Life is full of lessons. As authors we can use every experience to enhance our writing. We need to train ourselves to be aware and take note of all the moments, big or small, that make up our own backstory. That is the well from which we draw when creating compelling characters.

Please share in the comments any surprising discoveries from small events in your own life.

2 Lessons for the New Year

January 8, 2025 / Alice Valdal / 0 Comments

I hope everyone enjoyed a good break at Christmas. I know I did, although with the holiday falling on a Wednesday I was mixed up a good deal of the time about what day of the week we were on. It seemed I had two or three Sundays in every seven day stretch.

I got my Christmas wish with a pile of books under the tree — mystery, romance, literary and non-fiction. Love all the choices. I’ve finished Louise Penny’s latest mystery and am now reading a literary novel set in Ireland.

I also found time to listen to a webinar by Alessandra Torre on goal-setting and read an eye-opening article by Donald Maass on Writer Unboxed about taking your moral inventory. Moral inventory? What’s that? And what does it have to do with being a writer? As it turns out, according to the post, quite a lot.

Maass holds that there are two types of story-telling, the mirror and the arrow. The mirror reflects the culture, the arrow points the way to something else (better.) He offers a little quiz to help readers determine which category they fall into by determining their moral inventory, i.e. does the writer believe fate (mirror) determines our path, or does she believe in destiny (self-determination.) Try the quiz for yourself. It’s in the link I posted above.

When I answered the questions and scored myself, I came down almost in the middle 5/7. That’s my usual fate when faced with a self-knowledge quiz of any sort. Still, I found it useful to consider that I fell slightly more on the arrow side of the equation. At one time I was a teacher and I guess I never got over it. I do want to tell readers what to do. 🙂

Apart from the total score, I found my answers to the questions enlightening. I chose faith over reason. I saw each day as opportunity rather than peril. If those are my deeply held convictions, then, if I write characters with the same mind-set, they are more likely to resonate with readers since they are “true” to my beliefs.

Now, I’m not about to sit down and write a story based only on my answers to the quiz, but if I keep in mind that my moral inventory leans toward arrow, it will give me a new way to look at plot points that get tangled up or characters who won’t behave. Are those characters arrows or mirrors?

And, getting back to Alessandra Torre’s webinar, do my readers want to read stories of arrows or mirrors? Which do I want my “brand” to reflect? Torre’s notes were very focussed on marketing and finding an audience. Her own experience shows that readers like an author to “stay in her lane.” That is, they want to know, when they pick up an Alice Valdal novel that it will be like the last one and the next one.

The Louise Penny novel I just finished is her 19th in the series and the characters and setting are familiar to me. I look forward to spending time with those people in those places. I would be disappointed if Armand Gamache suddenly became a hippie, or Ruth Zardo played nice. The books are not boring, the suspense goes right through to the last page, but they are on brand and I can shell out my dollars knowing I’ll be happy with the book.

I’ve given up on New Year’s resolutions, but I’m happy to have two new lessons to apply to my writing career.

What about you? Any resolutions? Changes? Goals?

Christmas Short Story

December 22, 2024 / Alice Valdal / 0 Comments

This year’s Christmas short story is titled, Christmas Lost and Found.

Below is an excerpt.

Mary Margaret Murphy slammed on the brakes and wrenched the steering wheel of her late grandmother’s prized 1924 Maxwell, then watched in horror as the big, touring car slid soundlessly into a deep snow drift.

“No! No! No!” she slammed her palm against the steering wheel, then pressed on the accelerator, hoping to ram her way through. She shifted into reverse, then forward, then reverse again, working the clutch, trying to rock the vehicle free, but she was hopelessly stuck. Snow fell, so thick and fast it obliterated her tire tracks within minutes. Soon it would be impossible to tell the difference between roadway and ditch. She covered her face with her hands, despair and frustration clouding out judgement. Judgement! She snorted in self-derision. If she’d exercised even a modicum of good judgement she would never have set forth on a two-day journey to a wilderness cabin to celebrate Christmas.

She’d made a foolish choice because she could not bear the thought of Christmas all alone. Tears stung her eyes and she let them fall. There was no one to see. She was tired of pretending she was all right. The truth was she missed her grandmother dreadfully. Her grief was made worse by the fact there was no one to share it – no sibling, no aunts and uncles, not even a shirt-tail cousin. As the last of the Murphy line in Canada, she was utterly alone. So, when Helen, her friend from the school, invited her to come for Christmas, Mary jumped at the chance.

“Bah, humbug,” she muttered and swiped the tears away. Grandma would not approve. . . . To read more, join my newsletter list using the box at right.

7 Priorities for Writers

December 4, 2024 / Alice Valdal / 0 Comments

Welcome to December and all the hustle, bustle and delight of the Christms season. In Canada our usual frenzy of shopping, wrapping and shipping has been upended by the strike at Canada Post. All the little tokens I had assembled to send to my faraway family, now sit in a box, waiting. The absolutely best Christmas present I ordered for my godson, sits in a post office 3000 miles away, waiting. The special baking I do for my brother sits in the freezer, waiting.

All that waiting is getting me down, especially as the two sides in the strike aren’t even talking to each other. Then again, Advent, is a season of waiting, so maybe I should take advantage of that “waiting” time to plan the rest of the month.

As I’ve written about before, I’m a great advocate for making lists. I make lists for the grocery store. I make lists for Christms presents and Christmas cards. I make lists for writing tasks. I even make lists for coffee with friends. Sadly, my list-making has fallen by the wayside as I’ve been overwhelmed by too many items to put on the lists. But today I read about an “Advent Jar” which seems a wonderful visual for setting priorities on my list.

The idea is to take a pint jar and fill it with sunflower seeds and seven walnuts.(The example at right uses rocks and sand but the principle is the same.) It won’t take more than one try to realize that if you put in the sunflower seeds first, there is no room for the walnuts. But, if you put in the walnuts — your top priorities–first, then the sunflower seeds can find space around them.

My desk already has too much clutter, so I’m not rushing out to find a pint jar and sunflower seeds, but I’m using that visual to think about my priorities and hone my lists into managable order.

As a writer, one of the walnuts in my jar must be time at the keyboard.
Another walunt is my obligation to others. If I took on a task, I must show up and finish it.
Walnut three would be reading. I’ve just finished a large tome that my book club chose for discussion. It was not a work I enjoyed and it was very long. I set myself a goal of 40 pages a day in order to finish it in time. While I didn’t enjoy the story, the writing was beautiful. Reading the work of talented authors is like taking a writing class.
Relationships. For writers, readers and everyone else, our relationships are central to life and writers need a life. It is important to prioritize time with the people who nurture our spirits.
Giving. As much as we gain from relationships, we must also give to those relationships. Call a friend who is hurting. Have coffee with a colleague who struggles. At this time of year especially, take a gift to someone who is lonely.
Social media. Not my favourite way to spend time, but posting regularly on social media will raise an author’s profile. If we want to sell books, we must engage on at least one social media platform.
Write a blog. My blog makes me adhere to a schedule, encourages me to research a number of topics and connects me to readers. Not all authors maintain a blog but I do, so I must make it one of my walnuts.

Now that the big items, walnuts, are in the jar, I can pour in the seeds of less importance. Things like tidying my desk, organizing research notes, doing laundry, buying groceries, playing with the cat, singing in the choir, caring for my health . . . All activities that bring me joy, and there is room to fit them around the big things.

Just like lists, life events will impact my priorities, but the idea of starting with the big ones first can reduce the sense of overwhelm that listing every single item that needs doing in a day may generate.

I’ve given you my seven “walnuts” but each of us is different. What are the important things in your jar of neverending tasks?

A Dark and Stormy Night

November 20, 2024 / Alice Valdal / 0 Comments

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents – except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness … Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1830

These words, penned by Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, have long been held up as the quintessential example of overwrought, purple prose. He is even spoofed in a contest bearing his name. Entrants vie to write the worst opening lines they can conceive. In 2024 the winning entry read:

“She had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham-hock tossed from a speeding truck.”

For such a complicated man and prolific writer, — he turned out thirteen novels, two long poems, four plays, a history of Athens, and numerous essays, as well as editing a magazine in one twelve-year stretch– I wonder if it is fair to judge him by one line of awful prose.

He wrote with a social consious and his historical works were well researched. Don’t forget, he was writing at a time that celebrated gothic novels. He was a friend of Charles Dickens — another long-winded writer — who is still respected today.

Our protagonist was a politician as well as a writer. He served as a Whig member of Parliament from 1831 to 1841 and a Conservative from 1851 to 1866. He was Secretary of State for the Colonies from June 1858 to June 1859.

His historical fiction, The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) was a sensation in its day and remains one of Bulwer-Lytton’s two major works still being read. The other, The Coming Race is an early science fiction tale, written years before H.G.Wells and others popularized the genre. It is Bulwer-Lytton’s misfortune that this seminal work is best known as the inspiration for the name of a popular British beverage, Bovril.

Judging from a list of EBL quotes, he seems possessed of some wisdom. Consider “the pen is mightier than the sword.” A quote still in use today but written in 1839 by Bulwer-Lytton in one of his plays. He also coined the phrase “pursuit of the almighty dollar,” and invented the concept of the “dweller on the threshold,” later the title of a Van Morrison song.

Other quotes include these gems:

Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can.
The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man’s observation, not overturning it.
O be very sure that no man will learn anything at all, unless he first will learn humility.
The easiest person to deceive is one’s self.

His personal life included a tempestuous marriage. At one point he had his wife locked in an insane asylum. She was later released and was seen grieving at his funeral. He had a son, who became a diplomat and a well known poet using the name Owen Meredith.

In our day, social media can make a celebrity or destroy a reputation in a matter of seconds. In Bulwer-Lytton’s day, it took a little longer for critics to sway public opinion but Bulwer-Lytton’s detractors, including Makepiece Thackery, succeeded in turning him from one of Britain’s most popular novelists into a parody of florid writing.

I do enjoy the Bulwer-Lytton contest — terrible writing, done on purpose, is very funny — but I wonder if it isn’t time to give the man a little credit for his other accomplishments.

Agony in Amethyst

October 30, 2024 / Alice Valdal / 0 Comments

I’ve mentioned my friend, A.M. Stuart, on this blog before. She writes the Harriet Gordon series, set in early twentieth century Singapore. Well, she has just published the fifth and final installment, Agony in Amethyst. Perhaps she ran out of jewels. In any case, this tale tidies up a few loose ends left over from Terror in Topaz and brings Harriet and Curran to their HEA –finally!

If you want more background on Harriet and her times, go to A.M. Stuart books. You can see all the books in the series, watch a short video and get a free copy of the prequel The Umbrella, when you sign up for Ms Stuart’s newsletter.

In our splintered world, I often find myself railing against social media for spreading hatred and lies and fomenting anger.

And yet, when I consider my long friendship with an author on the other side of the world — I don’t think one can get farther from my home in Canada, to hers in Australia — I laud the wonders of electronic communication which make that possible.

Twenty years ago I picked her name off a registration list for an on-line course. The instructor wanted the students to pair up as a way of making us accountable. I decided to choose someone from far away. She picked me too and for the same reason. We’ve discovered so many commmonalities, apart from the obvious English language heritage. We’re both married. We both love cats. We both attend church. We share similar outlooks on the state of the world. We write and read historical fiction. We belong to romance writing groups.

We do have at least one difference. She is a much faster writer. When the pressure is on she can settle in front of her computer and churn out the words and storyline much, much faster than I can. I envy her on that front. To even things out a bit, I have a great neighbour and she has issues over the back fence. 😊

Over the course of our friendship we have endured a worldwide pandemic, seen a shift in world attitudes, watched our democracies come under threat, grieved at wars in Europe and the Middle East. We’ve seen the weakening of traditional publishing and the explosion of self-publishing in our industry. We’ve confronted the physical ailments associated with aging. And we’ve seen our friendship grow and deepen — all through weekly letters.

Through the power of words I’ve gained a friend oceans and continents away from me. Through the power of words we’ll keep on sharing our thoughts, our troubles and our triumphs. Through the power of words we have a friend to lean on.

Words have great power — good and evil. The maxim, “the pen is mightier than the sword,” still holds true. Like my friend and I, let us all use that power to learn and grow and understand the “other.”

Optimism

October 9, 2024 / Alice Valdal / 0 Comments

It has been a while since I posted anything on this blog, three months, to be exact. One reason is that it was summer and I spent more time gardening and less time writing. In fact, I took a sabbatical from writing while I waged war on the weeds, the slugs, the deer and the rabbits. This year’s garden took more work for less reward than I have ever experienced before.

Weather was the major culprit. The days were unseasonably warm early in the spring, then, after we’d seeded, the mercury dropped and anything that had sprouted stopped growing or died altogether. In mid-June I replanted most of my vegetables, gave up on various flower beds and tried to salvage something in the berry patch.

Scientists have been warning us for years that climate change will have a drastic effect on our agriculture, not to mention the forests, the oceans and the fresh water lakes. This summer I had practical experience of their dire predictions.

But, I’m a farmer’s daughter so the mantra of “next year” runs through my thinking. As I dig out stunted carrots, I plan that “next year” I’ll plump up my soil. Next year I’ll put floating covers over the seeds. Next year I’ll get a better deer fence.

Thank goodness for the optimism of farmers. Our newscasts have been filled with images of drought-stricken fields, smoke damaged fruit, and flooded barns. Farmers have every reason to give up, to sell their land to developers and look for an easier life. Fortunately for the rest of us, they hang in there, with plans and promises for “next year.”

As I return to my neglected stories, I seek to carry that optimism forward. This time, the scene that just wouldn’t come together last spring, will, somehow, write itself. This time the flat, cardboard character I created in the early drafts, will come to life with personality quirks, secrets, and dreams. This time, I’ll find the joy of telling a story.

How was your summer? What are your plans for “next year?”

Author: Alice Valdal (Page 1 of 34)

Here, There, and Everywhere

New Look at Morning Pages

VIRA

Writing Workshop

Menopause

Joy Cometh in the Morning

Name that Word

5 Body Language Surprises

Surprises

2 Lessons for the New Year

Christmas Short Story

7 Priorities for Writers

A Dark and Stormy Night

Agony in Amethyst

Optimism

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