My Blog Archives

Right Brain, Left Brain, Write

Back in the Middle Ages—well, the 1980s and ’90s—when networking groups were being invented, I was a member of a southern California organization for professional women called Women In Management (WIM). WIM was founded in the late ’70s by Dr. Helen Diamond and had seven chapters around Los Angeles. I served as program chair for the Orange County chapter, then later became corporate VP for public relations. Being a member of WIM was enormous fun (and a lot of work). I met some exceptional people and once got to carry a genuine Olympic torch around the room for one of our speakers.

Restarting Creativity with the New Year

I like to start the new year restarting my creativity. Not just in my work with the authors whose books I’m editing, not by making resolutions—stop eating junk food, be nicer to my neighbors, wash the kitchen floor … you know the drill—but by doing something creative. Since childhood, creativity has always been important to me. I was forever writing stories, drawing pictures, running around with my little Brownie camera (yes, I had a real Brownie), inventing games. It seems like half the events in my life turned into stories. When my brother joined the Boy Scouts, I had to write a story that I called “My Life as a Boy Scout.” I tried to sell it to Boys’ Life. Early rejection slip.

Occult Adventures with Walter Troll & Other Invisible Friends

This article was published in Circle Magazine in the winter, 2002, issue. Yes, it really is a true story, though I did change some names. I also put Rev. Debbee (not her real name) into one of my novels.

Back in the olden days, 25 years ago, when I was young and exceedingly naïve concerning the invisible worlds, I was a practicing Unitarian and a technical writer. Evidently, some higher being thought that made me good fodder. First, one of my friends told me that the things suddenly started happening were not “just my imagination.” Those colored balls zipping around the room were real. There were no coincidences in the universe. Next, I fell in love with a man who worked by day as an engineer. He also did automatic writing, and his “control” had convinced him that he had a Great Mission To Accomplish In This Life. He believed it. I came to believe it, too.

Getting Organized

Overture. A decade ago, I used to think that drumming was the best thing there was. I drummed at rituals and took classes and taught classes. But then the venue where I was part of a regular weekly drumming circle closed (now it’s a hyper-vegetarian restaurant) and the people I drummed with moved away. I sold my ashiko (a drum slightly smaller than a djembe) and most of my frame drums and gave away my other doumbek. Now I live with cats, and I believe that purring is the best thing there is.

Act I. When I say, “Let me be your editor,” and an author says yes and sends me his or her book, one of the issues we often discuss is organizing. I’m editing a dissertation at the present time, for example, and have suggested to the Ph.D. candidate that he reorganize and put all the discussion of his qualitative tests together and all the discussion of his quantitative tests together. He wants me to do this for him, but that’s way beyond my scope of work as an editor, so while I’ll help him, I suggested that he get with his committee and get their advice.

Organization is important to both fiction and nonfiction.

How the Outdoors Got on Us

Back in the Olden Days, when the world was a whole lot fresher (not to mention cheekier) than it is now, the people lived in the City of the Goddess. They were sensible people, beautiful people, smart people, golden people and—because they stayed in the city—they were Civilized People. They were much beloved by their Urban Goddess, who gave them Every Civilized Comfort, and so they lived in clean, comfortable homes and did the things civilized people have always done: they read books, they went to plays and concerts, they entertained their friends with home-cooked meals and home-bred conversation. They did every creative golden thing they could think to do.

Now these civilized people who lived so peacefully in the Olden Days were ruled by the Two Daughters of the Goddess of the City, Comforta and Cleanessa. Comforta and Cleanessa were the Co-Queens of the City and lived at the Ritz, where they enjoyed all the amenities of city life—haute cuisine, haute couture, and haute tub.

Beauty Asleep

Once upon a time, approximately now, there was a hard-working, highly principled man who was Lord Mayor of the megalopolis. The Lord Mayor lived, but spent very little quality time, with his wife, Queenie, and their prepubescent daughter, whom the media had affectionately dubbed The Princess. Queenie, who had once earned a juris doctor degree, had upon her husband’s election to his high post retired from her voracious practice at the legal clinic and devoted herself to philanthropic and occasionally quixotic endeavors. Having observed that the people do not tolerate professional first ladies, Queenie now focused her considerable energy upon only two targets: raising The Princess to be a bright, assertive young lady and raising the hopes of the homeless women who flowed back and forth through the megalopolis, a tide of tearful crones.

You Were Warned ...

One of my favorite T-shirts proclaims I am the grammarian about whom your mother warned you. When people see it, I watch their lips moving as they read it and think about it. Sometimes they laugh. Sometimes. Some people don’t get it. What’s not to get? I think it’s the “about whom.” People are haunted by junior high and the English class they sat in and sort of paid attention in, and reading my T-shirt they think about the rules they didn’t quite learn.