Category: Writing Wednesday

The current controversy over the Oprah Book Club pick, AMERICAN DIRT, has made me think about truth or fiction. Specifically, how do we as writers approach material that is either historical or societal based? We need to do our due diligence and do research. Novelists dig into oral histories...

(This is a continuation of handouts that I recently distributed at a writing seminar.) –a part of us is in every character –who are we called to write about? (Could be someone in our life, could be someone we see in a news report, someone in a dream/imagination) QUESTIONS...

I’m posting a series of handouts that I’ve prepared for past writing seminars. Here’s one on forming a writing workshop. A workshop can help you to be accountable to other writers and regularly produce pages. Naomi’s Guidelines for Running a Writing Workshop Determine goals and purpose with first the...

With the Oscar nominations and in our mystery genre, the Edgar announcement to come in a few days, observers are fixated on awards. But the older I get in the publishing industry, the more I’ve become fixated on sales. There have been campaigns notably in the children’s literature to...

Writing is not conducive to weight loss. In fact, being such a sedentary active, often fueled by one too many jalapeño potato chip, See’s molasses chip or bottle of sweet tea, it can lead to the weight gain. I’ve always been an active person–in the past, I’ve run in...

In one of my favorite writing books, BIRD BY BIRD, Anne Lamott discusses writing “shitty first drafts.” It’s a necessary evil for writers and sometimes I forget to extend that truth to my own work. On Christmas of all days, I printed out my work in progress, got comfortable...

(Written in December 2012) When my mother was in her twenties, she had sukiyaki parties with her friends in Hiroshima.  Instead of bring your own booze, it was bring your own extra ingredient.  To complement the sliced beef, it could be cubed blocks of tofu, a tangle of graykonnyakunoodles,...

I’m already anticipating 2020 as my year of the three Cs: cultivation, creativity and contemplation. Other than being a part of a short story anthology, I won’t have any new books published. Although I’ll still be attending three mystery conventions–two in my home state of California, I won’t be...

As I’m leading a life of writing, I also have to prepare for the next as well as the next next. In fact, I started doing some heavy duty research for the book I’m writing now about two years ago, while I was writing the final Mas Arai mystery,...

As National Novel Writing Month has ended, I’ve started to think about the balancing act that writers face in terms of action versus thinking. In some ways, I’m definitely a woman of action. I’m intuitive and listen to my gut. If my heart tells me to jump, I usually...