Whatta week! I’ve been cleared for exercise and I’m doing a No Sugar Detox until April, so I’ve been ping-ponging between lots of energy and focus and … well, something akin to non-specific rage. Basically, it’s like going through withdrawal, but meanwhile I’m kicking ass on my ToDo list. But enough about me, lets crack open this week’s batch of nerdy procrastination! 1. Why am I, the queen of all gummy bear addicts, ditching sugar all of sudden? Well, last week my sister introduced me to, HUNGRY FOR CHANGE, a fascinating documentary about the way we eat and diet, and it really inspired me to a) never ever go on another diet-diet, and b) ditch the sugar. I’ve been eating as much as I want of good foods all week and I mostly feel awesome save for the sugar withdrawal symptoms. If you don’t have Netflix streaming, click through to watch HUNGRY FOR CHANGE for free on your computer. But hop on it soon, the film will only be available until the end of March. [HUNGRY FOR CHANGE Screening Event] 2. Since this is from THE ONION, this advice is probably meant to be a joke, but unfortunately, this is how many of us pursue our dreams in real life. Read it and laugh…or groan. [“Find The Thing You’re Most Passionate About, Then Do It On Nights And Weekends For The Rest Of Your Life”] 3. As a “zafty” “bookwright” and “spermologer,” I’m wondering why these wonderful “Englishable” words fell out of favor. And I’m determined to bring back “Wonder-wench,” which is so much more clever than it’s boring counterpart, “sweetheart.” [Jezebel, “Are you a Spermologer? Find Out With 18 Obsolete Words That Never Should Have Gone Out of Style] 4. Find out what your Facebook...

According to this life expectancy calculator, if I get back to the lifestyle I had before I got pregnant with twins, I’m going to live to be 98 years old, barring any accidents or traumas. Wow. I mean… wow. That gets me to thinking about all sorts of things: long-term care insurance, what I’ll do with all those extra years — especially if I become too addled or arthritic to write, and how my relationships with the younger members of my family will go. I will say that one of the weird things about having my mother die on me when I was 19 is that I’m really murky about adult mother-daughter relationships. I have a pretty good idea of how I’d like to raise my daughters until they’re out of our house, but after that … no idea. I’ve observed loving mother-daughter relationships, toxic ones, estranged ones and a lot of in-between. But in the end, these are just observations. I joke about my plan to become the world’s orneriest senior citizen, and sometime late at night, I fret that my children, for whatever reason, won’t call or visit in my old age. But the truth is I have no idea what kind of mother I’ll be if I really do live as long as this calculator says I will. I know that I should strive not to nag my daughters; that I should give them a thorough money education, because I really don’t want them asking me for any kind of loan after the age of 25; that I’d do best to keep my opinions to myself unless they ask for them — and maybe even then; that I’ve got to let them live their lives, but that I probably won’t be able to resist a...

First I celebrated my birthday, then I celebrated my twins’ birth day. Now BETTER THAN GOOD HAIR, the book I co-authored with curlebrity and genuinely awesome person, Curly Nikki, is here!!! January 2013 is officially going down in my life calendar as the best month ever. This book is great for curlies, those considering going natural, and parents of natural kids. So do us the great boon of picking up a copy...

So here’s something I haven’t done since the last time I was pregnant: typed out a blog entry on my phone. After two hospital visits with contractions and two ultrasounds confirming that my cervix shortens terribly whenever any pressure is applied, I was put on strict bed rest, which means I’m only able to lay down unless I have to use the bathroom or take my allotted daily 5-minute shower. I was not happy about this news on Monday. By Tuesday I was despondent. Not being able to write, take care of my daughter, or get out of bed when my bladder isn’t full makes me feel useless and beyond pathetic. Also, it’s boring as all get out. As much as I used to love marathoning TV programs and reading, now it makes me feel like a sad shut in. But last night I was hit with an epiphany: maybe this was my 2013 Theme presentation. What’s a theme presentation? Well, I always try to abide by a certain theme every year whether it be “If You’re Scared, Do It Anyway” (2010) or “Sowing the Seeds” (2012). I had been looking forward to 2013 as a harvest year — two babies and two books, but last night it occurred to me that with so many changes afoot maybe I should adopt a new theme, namely “Get it Done!” Seed years are great, because you put a lot of stuff into the universe and you get a lot of stuff back. Also, you get in the habit of sowing, you figure ish out like your writing schedule and your mommy schedule, and maybe even a social schedule if you’re lucky. However, the universe doesn’t mistake finally getting comfortable for growth and at least 99.9% of...

Just in case you’re wondering how I feel about writing while on bedrest, the answer is that I hate it so much, I mean so much that I’m writing about it over at Girlfriends Book Club: So like a lot of expectant mothers of twins before me, I’ve been put on bedrest. It’s funny, because I knew it could happen, had read about it happening to countless others, but for whatever reason, just did not see it happening to me. Truth be told, having moved my writing set-up to my bed at about three months into my pregnancy, it felt a bit like I was already on bedrest. I spent the majority of my days in bed writing, and was even amused to read in one of my twin books that mother’s who got put on bedrest should work on that novel they always wanted to write. You’d think, actually being put on bedrest wouldn’t be so bad. Except it’s worse than bad. In fact, it’s terrible. READ THE REST! featured image credit:...

I love literary novels, love, love, love them. But let’s face it, man cannot live on exquisitely-crafted prose alone. Also, the line between literary and boring is thin, and I’ve been burned bad — as in usually my “Worst Novel of the Year” pick is a book that has crossed that line egregiously bad. So I often take “great literature” breaks with sci-fi. And whenever, someone says on Facebook says that they’d like to read a book that’s good but not too heavy I tend to suggest sci-fi. So just in case you’re looking for the same, here are my favorite sci-fi reads of the year so far. Title: REDSHIRTS Author: John Scalzi Why I Decided to Read It: I’d heard a lot about Scalzi, but had never dived into one of his books. However, the plot to REDSHIRTS, which basically boils down to, crew members on a Star Trek-like ship, start to realize that they’re basically disposable, and try to figure out why, seemed too good a concept to pass by. I gifted the audiobook to my husband for his birthday, and it immediately sent him into book thrall to the point that he was nagging and nagging me to read it, too. Finally I did and it sent me into the exact same thrall. What I Loved: Scalzi goes big in this one — you think you know how big he’s going, but then he goes up and beyond that. Every writer should read this just for the lesson in having balls. Writing Lessons Learned: You can write a compelling book with well-formed characters barely using any physical descriptors at all. Pretty impressive. Title: Q: A Novel Author: Evan J. Mandery Why I Decided to Read It: Q: A Novel got a great...

I like to read at least one self-help book and one writing book every year. But this year I got lucky, because the best self-help book I read also happened to be a great guide to handling the uglier emotional aspects of writing like fear, doubt, and chronic procrastination. It’s called THE TOOLS, and it changed my writing life. I first heard about co-writer, Barry Michels, a therapist who is particularly popular among Hollywood screenwriters, in this New Yorker article. The article (which is very much worth reading in full) made me long to have the money and clout to see this unconventional therapist once a week myself, but I am in possession of neither, so I settled for buying THE TOOLS, the book he co-authored with his mentor, Phil Stutz. The core of Michels’s and Stutz’s philosophy might be summed up as “Stop whining about your problems and address them already with this set of tools we’re giving you.” As a consummate whiner and chronic problem haver, I found this approach refreshing. And even better, it worked! Writing-wise, I’ve never been happier. I fret, procrastinate, and beat myself up less. And I find myself more than grateful for the tools as I go about my day-to-day writing life. Can’t get yourself to face the blank page? There’s a tool for that! Worried that your writing isn’t good enough, won’t ever be good enough? There’s a tool for that! Prone to self-sabotage? There’s a tool for that! The pessimistic voices in your head getting you down? There’s a tool for that! Anyone who has ever been prone to spiraling into self-doubt in the middle of the night will appreciate having a tool that effectively shuts down negative thoughts and allows you to get back...

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m prone to nightmares, so I’m not a huge fan of being scared. Usually if I read a horror novel, it has to have more than chills going for it. I want to be entertained, I want to be put in a thrall of “then what happened?” — horror novels more than any other kind have to earn their keep with me. Think Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Peter Straub, masters of horror, who know how to both entertain and keep a reader hooked in. This is the only explanation I can give for why I resisted the work of Tananarive Due for so long, even after my good friend, Tamara, whose taste I trust implicitly, recommended her work to me our senior year of college. By that point I wasn’t even reading King, Koontz, and Straub anymore, having moved on to the then-exploding market of black women’s fiction. As an emerging woman attending an all-women’s college with no romantic prospects in sight, I was most interested in immersing myself in the world of the older black woman’s experience — especially if they were in any way romantic. As it was, when I finally did read my first Tananarive Due novel in my later twenties, I set myself up for a perfect storm of pure horror. For one, I had very recently returned to Stephen King, having just read and loved the first two books in his DARK TOWER series. I was in the library, scouring the aisles for audiobooks which I might listen to while performing the mundane tasks of my dead-end job, when I came across an audiobook called MY SOUL TO KEEP by Tananarive Due, featuring a blurb from none other than King himself. I picked up the...

If this post seems disjointed, that’s because it is. That’s because I am. A month ago, I went into the bimonthly appointment with my therapist unsure of what I should talk about. I was in a pretty good mood and nothing had been bothering me as of late. So I talked about my second fiction book, which I was rewriting and the non-fiction book I’d recently finished rewriting. I worried a bit about my daughter, and talked about my plans for getting my third fiction book done in 2013. My therapist asked about another issue, to which I responded, “Yeah, I’m getting a little freaked out about taking time off from writing next year. I’m wondering how quickly I can get back to work.” Then I talked some more about the third book, which is due next December. At the end of our time, my therapist said to me, “Ernessa, as much as I love hearing about your career, I think next time we should focus on the fact that you’re five months pregnant with twins.” My therapist is a gentle person, but to me, this felt like nothing less than a full-on confrontation. On my way back to my car, I considered dumping her. I was in a great mood. Did I really need a therapist any longer? Especially one that was going to stomp all over stated great mood with her unreasonable demands? I might have continued down this road, except the terrible thing about being a writer is that it makes you overly self-aware, and even without a degree in psychology, I could tell that my anger with my therapist might have less to do with her suggestion and more to do with the fact that I was beginning to suspect...

One of the nice things about being in my mid-thirties is that I no longer have the wild optimism of my twenties. Don’t get me wrong, there are many things to be said for a can-do attitude. Really, would anyone attempt a career in the arts if they didn’t start out thinking that doing so would easier than it actually is? In many ways we need an initially full well of confidence in self to power us through the lean years and all the rejection that comes with pursuing art. However, it does feel like I’ve spent much of my thirties unlearning the magical thinking of my twenties. Most especially when is comes to the practical stuff. For example, I now know I won’t remember an idea “if it’s good enough.” I’m a forgetful person, and I need to write it down. I missed an important meeting with my FaN colleagues last Saturday, which doubly convinced me that my now two year old practice of checking my calendar every night before I go to bed is not only suggested, but completely necessary. I won’t exercise spontaneously because it’s suggested and good for me. I totally need to plan that ish out.  If I don’t put an event in my calendar then it might as well not exist. Same goes for errands added to my ToDo app. I’ve been known to answer my husband’s follow-up queries about things I promised to do with what I feel is the very logical conclusion of, “No, I forgot. You should have made me put it on my ToDo app.” Now he tends to say, “Could you put [mundane task] on your ToDo list.” And if it’s really important, he offers to bring me my phone. This is the...

Since becoming a mother, I keep on running across the same weird claim. It goes something like this: TV is bad for kids because it limits their imagination. Tell your kids to get outside and play! Don’t let them veg out in front of a TV all day! They’ll never learn imaginative play. I’ve had other mothers and even teachers tell me this in conversations about why they didn’t allow their own children to watch television or play with iPhones or really have any screen time whatsoever. What makes the claim weird is that the moms who tell me this are rarely creatives. I also have a hard time believing this claim, because I 1) make a living off my imagination, and 2) was one of those kids who was practically raised by a television. I know a few people who were raised without televisions. I won’t speak to their imaginations, but none of them are in creative fields. And I don’t personally know one creative who grew up without a television in their home. In fact, some of the most creative people I know watch obscene amounts of television to this day. In many ways, television gives children more great stuff to imagine. How limited would a toddler’s world view be if there weren’t any children’s programming today. When I was a child, I built living room forts and pretended to drive the car to places like K-Mart. When I picked my daughter up at preschool the other day, she and some other kids were pretending to have tea on a rocket, which they planned to take to the flower shop before they headed to outer space. I didn’t even know China existed when I was three. My daughter has already asked to...

At least once, sometimes as many as four times a month, I find myself hastily packing a bag and dashing off to the airport in order to make a flight to such far flung destinations as China, Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, South America — really just about anywhere in the world except for the lower 48. Sometimes I know I have no chance of making my flight, and sometimes I make it with just enough time to spare and am often surprised to find travel mates from yesteryear like my sister, or my husband, or Crystal, the Canadian who traveled all over the Eastern Hemisphere with me in 2000, or my program mates from when I did my junior year abroad in China. Sometimes I land in my destination country and have a lot of fun for a day or two, looking for places to eat and taking subways to meet up with friends from long ago. I always wake up. The disappointment of waking up from these dreams has faded over the years, not quite gone, but familiar enough that it doesn’t overly upset me anymore. Often, I go right back to sleep and end up dreaming of more mundane things. When I was in my twenties, I used to look at my overdue bills and meager salary and dating disappointments, and think, “One day you’re really going to regret spending irresponsibly/deigning to work this cubicle job/dumping that really nice guy.” But thanks to an early intervention from my sister, I got my finances under control. My many years in cubicles has informed my writing in ways that landing a dream job right out of college would not have. And the only thing I regret less than the nice guys...

The other week while I was in St. Louis, my sister blurted out something while out to dinner with family, regarding some career news that I did not want other people to know yet, for various reasons. I was shocked. Most of you don’t get why I was shocked. Most of you have stories upon stories of people (let’s keep it real here — usually family members) telling other people stuff that you didn’t want them to know. But you have to understand, this hasn’t happened to me in years — literally years. I seriously can’t remember an instance where this has happened to me since I started keeping a blog. This, I thought, as I shushed her and quickly tried to change the subject, is how most people must feel. Like they have private lives that should be respected. I mean, many of you know about my struggles with IVF, my two miscarriages, my bi-monthly therapy sessions, my feelings about interracial relationships, religion, and a bunch of other happy and not so happy stuff, because I blog about it. My IRL friends are privy to even more personal details. I’m pretty comfortable with sharing, often to the point of oversharing. But after my sister blabbed this secret to my family, I realized the reason I was so comfortable having no privacy is because I actually have a lot of it. Strangely enough, the nicest thing about being an over sharer is that no one ever asks you to share. They mostly assume that I already have, which makes it ridiculously easy to keep secrets. The only reason it’s stopped being easy is because I’m not blogging as much or as personally as I used to. So consider this. If you really want people...

I grew up in St. Louis, but I truly feel I came of age in L.A. This makes me nostalgic for one city but head over heels in love with the other. While I have very fond memories of St. Louis and love coming back to visit my family, it often feels like a high school reunion. Like the quarterback who you realize is only 5’10 with nothing much to add to conversations when you’ve long remembered him as a 6’3 god with a magnetic personality, I’m often surprised by all the things in my hometown that aren’t quite as good as I remember. For example, White Castle sliders, which I adored in high school are now gross patties sandwiched between two lackluster square buns. LACMA puts the art museum I grew up with to shame (though, I’m often surprised by how quickly Chuck Close’s “Keith” draws me into a mini-thrall). And it often feels like St. Louis’s hottest new restaurants are sad copies of what’s already come and since become derivative in L.A. Because of this I’ve begun to distrust my childhood memories. We have family memberships to both Huntington Gardens in and The Arboretum out here in SoCal. A few times while walking through, I’ve said something along the lines of, “We have a really nice Botanical Garden in St. Louis, too,” to my husband. But then I’d wonder. Was it really that nice, or was I remembering it through the lens of a kid who didn’t have any real cultural experiences beyond St. Louis until she went east for college? So imagine my surprise when I attended the Japanese Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden, and lo and behold, the venue wasn’t as good as I remembered it. It was even...

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen up to the current season of Dr. Who, you don’t want to read this post. With the new season of Dr. Who about to premiere this Saturday, I’ve been thinking and hearing a lot about — well, not Dr. Who himself, but his companions. I’m still not a fan of the Matt Smith version of the doctor — too manic, doesn’t play the emotional scenes all that well, in my opinion — but I have become a huge fan of Amy and Rory, the couple who are currently serving as his companions. Their evolving relationship, which has included the worse wedding jitters ever, the worse honeymoon ever, and the worst skipped parenthood ever, has become the most interesting thing about the current version of the show. And I often find myself enjoying the episodes centered around them, more than I do the ones centered around the doctor himself. They’ve already announced the next assistant, yet another pretty young thing, who I’m sure will be quite nice and all that, and probably fiance-free, which means free to actually romance the doctor. However, I find myself in the unfamiliar position of not really cheering for a romance, at least not where Matt Smith is concerned. While I cried when a version of the David Tennant Doctor was finally reunited with Rose, I just don’t find myself in love with the idea of this current doctor falling in love. In fact, my favorite episodes from the Matt Smith series involved his bromance with Craig Owens, a portly fellow with real life issues. Indeed, whereas David Tennant seemed to right charm any woman that shared the screen with him — including one who became his real life wife — Matt Smith seems...

Heya, I’m over at Girlfriend’s Book Club this week, blogging about words I can pronounce but can’t spell and even more frustrating, words I can spell, but can’t pronounce. Check it out….   It’s funny that this cycle’s topic is “Transitions” or as I like to call it before spell check gives me a red line, “Transistions.” It’s mostly funny because I’m currently going through so many transitions: second agent, second publishing company, second book edit, moving house, finishing up an almost promotion-free year of content generation — that I don’t think I could possibly do justice to this topic without having my post go obscenely long. So instead let’s talk about random words we can’t spell without the help of spell check. As you already know, “transition” is on the list for me. So is “separate” and “paparazzi” — the latter used to be much more frustrating back when I wrote about celebrities for a living. The only thing worse than words you can say but not spell are the words you can spell but can’t say. For example I once embarrassed myself but good while walking to lunch with a former boss. “What do you want to eat?” she asked. Me: “Oh, I don’t know. Lately I’ve had such terrible food in-u-eye.” Her: “What?” Me: “You know, I haven’t felt that passionate about eating food in general.” Her: [laughing rather hard] “Oh, you mean ahn-wee!” And that’s how I learned to pronounce “ennui.”...

This is the shortest piece I wrote this year, yet it’s the one people have told me off blog that they appreciated the most. Go figure. If you have decided to pursue writing as a career, the voices in your head will ask you this question often. “How about if no one likes your story?” Or the more dramatic version: “How about if every one on Earth rejects what you have written?” As far as insidious questions go, this is probably one of the silliest. Somebody’s going to like your story. What’s even funnier is that there’s a reader out there for even the worst pile of dreck that will just love it. Really, the question(s) you’re really asking here are “Are there enough people who will either like or love my story for me to feel satisfied?” And, “How do I go about finding the people who will love this story and getting them to read it?” Now those are valid questions, for which I have no good answer. But for now, while you are writing, rewriting, or shopping your novel, take solace in this: There is no such thing as a story that everyone loves. And there is no such thing as a story that no one likes. So the next time the voices in your head ask you “How about if no one likes your story?”, let them know, “On the contrary, at least one person out there is going to absolutely love it.” featured image credit:  Denisa Kadlecová  ...

I know, I know — I’ve had much more inspirational pieces here on Fierce and Nerdy, but strangely enough, this is the one I get asked about the most in real life. So just in case you’re considering getting LASIK and didn’t see this the first time around… Because I totally did for a number of reasons: 1. My daughter kept snatching and throwing my glasses at the worst times. One time she threw them while we were out on the street, and I had to figure out how to keep her from running into traffic and find my glasses at the same time. Keep in mind I’m blind as a bat without them. Luckily a passerby picked them up for me, but it was chilling moment in both child-rearing and glasses wearing. 2. I had grown to hate the fuss of contacts. I kept meaning to go back to contacts after my daughter was born, but never did, accept for special events and vacations. After three years of glasses wearing went by, I kind of knew contacts were no longer an option. 3. I read and watch a lot of post-apocalyptic content, and I was becoming increasingly aware, that if some world-as-I-know-it-ending ish down, I would be completely effed if I lost my glasses. 4. I could. #4 was the main reason I ended up going through with it. I consulted for LASIK back in 2007 and was told my corneas were too thin for the procedure. Five years later, I got to wondering if my corneas had improved given the fact that I no longer wore contacts and therefore didn’t rub them nearly as much as I used to. As it turned out, the cornea requirements aren’t as rigorous these days, because...

Since moving to a walking neighborhood almost two years ago, the quality of our overall lives have gone up, but sadly the quality of my reading life has gone down. I barely drive any more, so there’s no chance to listen to audiobooks. And now that my daughter is in pre-school, I can fully work from home, which means no more long walks to the “office”/coffee shop. Added to all of this, I’ve actually been writing a lot over the past year, so less time for books all around. It’s very sad. However, I did manage to squeeze in three books by fellow black women authors, and strangely enough, they all involved women living and/or working in places I wasn’t familiar with. Here’s my list of the best black books I’ve read this year (so far). PASSING LOVE by Jacqueline Luckett I’ve met Ms. Luckett at two different writing festivals, and have always been impressed by her warm-yet-really-glamorous spirit. I’m so happy that I finally got a chance to read one of her books. PASSING LOVE is ostensibly about two different woman from two different times, who both find themselves in France. But nestled within pages of superior description and amazing character work is a mystery that will keep you guessing until the end. What I Loved: This novel is beautifully written, and does what every good novel set in France should: make you want to go there. This is black history from a different angle and fascinating on several different levels. Perfect for mothers and daughters alike. Writing Lesson Learned: A novel can be poetic without being overly flowery or unclear. Ms. Luckett walks this line well. Click HERE to buy the book at Amazon.   A TASTE OF SALT by Martha Southgate I’ve never met Ms. Southgate...

Like a lot of American moms, I’m always on the lookout for the next great parenting book. This can be a frustrating mission. More often than not, parenting books make me feel like I’m doing a terrible job, that their advice doesn’t fit in with my lifestyle — or any other lifestyle that doesn’t involve staying at home and/or a platoon of nannies, and that, no matter what, it’s all my fault because I’m the mom and constantly failing. I imagine if a mom did follow all this American parenting advice to the letter, she would find herself completely miserable all the time. And quite frankly, the results from what I’m seeing on the street, aren’t all that bang up. I love that American toddlers really do excel at the art of self-expression, but all too often, I see kids melting down and pretty much running their parents, who seem to be becoming more servile by the day in an attempt to appease their little kings and queens. How refreshing then that two recent reads, BRINGING UP BEBE by Pamela Druckerman and FRENCH KIDS EAT EVERYTHING by Karen Le Billon*, aren’t even billed as parenting books. Instead they’re memoirs of two American moms raising children in France. Let me tell you, I ate these two books up. Never have two books made so much parenting sense on both practical and loving levels. I immediately began applying some of the “French” lessons and things continue to improve around our household. Suddenly we’re able to take our daughter to restaurants without meltdowns, and she seems happier for having a firm set of rules. Not everything has been a rousing success. We’re still dealing with her refusal to eat or even try certain foods, and the husband...

I adore graphic novels. I know they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but I love them for two reasons: 1) You don’t have to spend a lot of time wading into the material, the artwork just pulls you right on in to the story. Perfect for the busy mom, attempting to get her read on while her daughter quietly plays by herself for limited spurts of time. 2) They make awesome conversation pieces. About the only thing I’m willing to talk with complete strangers about is books, and more people ask me about the graphic novels I pull out in public than anything else I read. But here are a few suggestions for certain kinds of readers who want to test drive a graphic novel, but don’t know where to start. For the literate reader: BAYOU Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 by Jeremy Love. I raved about the first volume of this series back in 2010, and I must say that I loved volume two even more. Set in the post-slavery south, this is gritty magical realism rendered so well, you will want an African-American literature professor on hand to explain it all to you. It’s like Alice & Wonderland meets no-kind-of-black-book-you’ve-ever-read-before. Jeremy Love just might be the most exciting voice in graphic novels right now.   For the reader who loves memoir: THE MAGICAL LIFE OF LONG TACK SAM by Ann Marie Fleming: an Illustrated Memoir. Imagine if you found a picture of your great grandfather and dug deeper, only to discover that he was one of the most extraordinary magicians the world has ever known? This is exactly what happened to Ann Marie Fleming, whose great-grandfather, “Long Tack Sam,” began life in a 19th century Chinese village and went on to sell...

Heya Nerds! Talking about how I pretty much refuse to let anything I write die over at Girlfriends Book Club. Here’s the excerpt: I’ve been trying to figure out how to write this post ever since our current topic cycle of trunk novels was announced. It’s not that I never submitted a novel that didn’t get published. I totally did. Twice when I was in college. Strangely enough, both query letters were strong enough to get me several requests for partials and one request for a full from agents. Unfortunately the writing was not strong enough to garner me any offers of representation. Shortly after college, I switched from novel writing to screenwriting. I have several trunk screenplays, and scads of rejections to go with them. But then in 2005, I came back to novel writing, finished my debut novel in 2008, 32 CANDLES, and it sold in 2009. I have no idea what happened to the hard copies of my college novel and I’m not sure how to go about getting them off their respective hard disks (remember those?).  But in the end, it doesn’t really matter, because the truth is, every single thing I write to the end becomes a zombie. [Continued at Girlfriends Book...

I’ve started this post many times. I just don’t have the words. I especially don’t have coherent paragraphs of words. There are many much better posts out there right now, especially this one by her dear friend, Bassey Ikpi. I admired Erica Kennedy so much. I remember reading BLING in paperback and calling up my sister, “You have got to read this book.” I remember reading FEMINISTA while on vacation in Hawaii and thinking, “I will never be this funny.” I remember thinking the other day that I would really, really like to read another Erica Kennedy book. I remember hoping she was working on something new. I recall her once saying something in some context about biking around in sunny Miami. Whenever I thought of her, which was often, despite the fact that we never met offline, that’s the image of her I had in my head. Riding her bike and smiling like she was in a Coca Cola commercial. I wish I had a picture. I woke up suddenly on Sunday night and thought to myself, “I wish she could have remained naive forever. I wish we all could.” I looked at my clock and it was two a.m. Naiveté isn’t a quality usually ascribed to writers, but we all have before and afters. And that’s all I have to say, I guess. No, actually it’s not. I wrote to a very good friend of Erica’s the other day about all the things I didn’t want to say in this post. And in the end it all came down to this: I feel a burning need to say something in celebration, but I also want people to understand how truly terrible her passing is, to understand how tragic her loss is. The...

This year it takes the form of a lament about never, ever getting writer’s block over at “Girlfriend’s Book Club”: At least once a year I talk about having been called to writing as a curse. Most of the time I regard doing what I do for a living as a blessing, but every so once in a while, I feel the need to gnash my teeth and rend my clothes over my “terrible fate” in the form of a blog post. That time of the year is now. That post is this one....

Amy Robinson’s wonderful blogumn about her driving anxiety last week got me to thinking about my somewhat recent decision to stop talking on the phone for anything non-work, best friend, or child related. I’d been low-grade hinting to friends and family that I’d rather receive emails and texts than calls for about two years. At first I blamed the baby, then the toddler for my refusal to have long conversations on the phone or in many cases, even answer it. But lately, I’ve been telling people the truth: I just don’t like talking on the phone — especially to strangers … or anyone who lives close by … or really anyone but my best friend. I even rush my husband off the phone. I live in the land of self-improvement and I’ve become an avid disciple. I go to therapy two times a month, I communicate as oppose to argue with my husband, I’m about to start yet another diet and exercise plan on Monday, I shove down my sometimes crippling social anxiety to attend events, and right now I’m reading a book on body language, so that I can make the physicality of my writing even better. My goal is to be a permanent fixer-upper, to keep on improving until I can’t any more because I’m dead. Except I don’t want to talk on the phone. It’s hard to explain why, but doing so unbalances me. I become anxious and then frustrated with myself for feeling that way. I long for physical social cues that tell me what the other person is thinking. My mind floats to work I should be doing, and I lose concentration. I castigate myself for having such a hard time with a device other people find so easy...

Hey-o, Over at Girlfriend’s book club this week, talking about why I tend to get much more worked up about the romantic twists on NEW GIRL than the current state of publishing. Check it out if you’re interested in my opinions about not having a strong opinion on this particular subject. *warning: there are F-bombs in this post and God’s name gets taken in hypothetical vain. “I wouldn’t call myself a know-it-all, but opinions? Oh, I’ve got them. I’ve got opinions about motherhood and finding Mr. Right and good marriages and restrictions on abortion and the lack of diversity in just about everything and the current state of feminism and work/life balance and the mainstream beauty standard and the best ways to lose weight, and, and … I’m going to stop here, but understand I could do a blog that simply listed all the subjects I have strong opinions about and come in at a pretty hefty word count. So you’d think I’d have a strong opinion about the current state of...

I’ve talked quite a bit about the many things that happened after my first official date with CH. But in the lead up to Valentine’s Day, I’d like to talk about the stuff that happened before the Friday we went out to dinner six and a half years ago: 1) We met at a dive-bar birthday party for a fellow Derby Doll. I had to drag myself to this party, and it was my third event of the night. I didn’t notice him, until I ran into him and one of his best friends while buying a drink at the bar. The best friend casually introduced us after I said, “Hey, Bitchy [his derby name was Bitchy Kitten — don’t ask], how’s it going?” But later CH told me that he noticed me right away that night. “I saw you smiling from across the room.” 2) We were in the same place without knowing it twice before that night. While I was at CMU, he did a special guest-teach of my Camera Lab class. I decided to skip that day, because “some lighting guy” was coming in to teach it. And the summer before that, we were at the same premiere for THE COUNTRY BEARS. Me as the plus one of a Disney executive friend, and him working behind the scenes. 3) I’d been planning to attend a party  thrown at his house the summer before we met — mutual friends from the Derby Doll world had invited me — but I got into a huge fight with my then-boyfriend and didn’t end up making it out. 4) The day before the night I met him, I interviewed to housesit for a lighting designer named Manny, who I knew through Carnegie Mellon’s alumnae network. He mentioned...

For a while there, I wasn’t using smilie faces. At first they were cute, but then people started abusing them, unspeakable things were typed, and then tons of column ink got spilled about how literate folks should just hate the smilie face and how it made others think less of you. So I stopped using the smilie face. But then a funny thing happened on the way to trying to become a better onliner, I realized that the smilie face is damn handy and really practical in a lot of commenting or email situations: For example, there’s no better way to let someone know that it’s all fun and games when you say, “Fuck you. You are a bitch. :)” Really, there’s just no non-smilie face, non-convoluted way to pull that line off without possibly hurt feelings. Believe me, I’ve seen others try to do it. It didn’t go well. The smilie face might not be particularly literate, but it guarantees that people will always get that you are joking — which is important if, like me, a lot of your humor is rooted in sarcasm and hyperbolic insult. Also, is there any better response to a perturbing-but-not-exactly-disturbing post about something some celebrity/politician/random dude did, said, or claimed than :-/ And I particularly love “:-O” as opposed to “Ooh, cute!” As much as people bag on smilie faces, you have to admit that they can be really useful at times. I think the secret lies in moderation. Why are you such an asshole? :) = YES Why are you such an asshole? :) :) :) :) :) = NO In general, it’s a good idea to only have one emoticon in any post or missive. Otherwise, I think we should all feel free to...

The other day, I formally noticed that I’ve taken on some new prejudices in the past couple of years: 1. Not being accessible by email and/or app. A lot of people complain about not being able to talk to an actual human being in customer service situations, but few things annoy me more than actually having to pick up the phone and talk to an IRL person in order to get something accomplished. The last few times I’ve ordered pizza, it’s been from Pizza Hut as opposed to a much-better mom and pop. While the local mom and pop have a better quality product, Pizza Hut has an app, which means I don’t have to talk to anyone or repeat my credit card number over the phone or explain how to spell my name 3,000 times to get my food delivered. In the same vein, if a business professional gives me a card, and there’s a telephone number but no email address on it, I know I won’t be doing business with that person in the future. Even my primary care physician is accessible by email. I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t be in this day and age. 2. Cash-only businesses. You can have the best food/clothes/whatever this side of the Mississippi, but if you don’t accept credit, I’m not frequenting your business. I’m a bit of a money nerd, and over the past two years, I’ve come to abhor dealing with cash. I love put everything on a card and knowing where every penny of our money is going. I enjoy racking up points for all of my purchases — and even more using those points to take vacations. I go out of my way to avoid cash-only parking garages, and I really...

Hulloo, Everyone. I know a lot of people are trying to get pumped up for their best writing year ever right now. I know I was around this time back in 2007, which is when I finally got super-serious about writing my debut novel, 32 CANDLES. So I thought I’d share this pep talk that I wrote for the 2011 NaNoWriMo donors. There’s some good stuff in here about establishing a good writing practice that hopefully even those that didn’t attempt NaNoWriMo last year will be able to use:   Last November, more people than ever completed the NaNoWriMo challenge, got their stars, and are still floating on a euphoria of “having done it,” that still had them pumped when it came time to make their New Year’s Writing Resolutions. That’s just great. Congrats, congrats! … Now let’s talk about the rest of us, the ones that didn’t hit the 50,000 word mark. Though, I didn’t participate in NaNoWriMo last November, I include myself in your ranks, because my debut novel, 32 CANDLES, started out as a 2005 NaNoWriMo challenge. I’d completed all of 5,000 words by the end of the month, and I didn’t end up finishing my rough draft until December… 2007. Yes, it took me over two years just to write the rough draft of my novel. The rough draft! At the time of my original failure, I was thinking pretty much what you’re probably thinking, “I suck, but hey, I’ll be done with this thing by the time the next NaNoWriMo rolls around.” My answer to that … maybe you will. I wasn’t. But maybe you will be. You see, a lot of people talk about learning from failure. They say, “Don’t be afraid of failure, don’t beat yourself up about...

I’ve always wanted to be the decisive sort. To look at an issue, make a quick decision and then stand by it. Like those powerful businessmen that you’re always reading about in books. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the course of my lifetime, it’s that I’m just not. Quick decisions often come back to bite me in the butt. And though I’ve striven (is that a word?) to figure out how to decide things faster, I most often find myself adding more DON’Ts to my already considerably long “don’t make an important decision if…” list. Here’s just a small sampling of that list: 1. Don’t make an important decision if you’re hungry. 2. Don’t make an important decision if you’re depressed. 3. Don’t make an important decision if you’re under three months or over six months pregnant. 4. Don’t make an important decision if you’re in a weirdly great mood. 5. Don’t make an important decision if you’re tired. 6. Don’t make an important decision if you’re not currently in your main time zone. 7. Don’t make an important decision it you’re angry. 8. Don’t make an important decision if you’re hurt. 9. Don’t make an important decision if you’ve had more than one drink — especially now that you’re over the age of 30. 10. Don’t make an important decision if you don’t have access to your iCalendar. You think I’m joking, but I’m not. The truth is, I’ve learned more about making good decisions by discovering when not to make decisions. And I’m still not ever sure that I’m deciding right. But how about you? How do you make decisions? And are you as decisive as you want to...