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Review of Save the Cat! Cracking the Beat Sheet Online Class
When WOW! Women on Writing asked me if I’d like to review the Save the Cat! “Cracking the Beat Sheet” online course I jumped at the chance. I have several novels in need of revision and thought a more structured program might give me the help I’ve been needing, plus I have a copy of Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody and it’s one of my most treasured writing tools. See below for more information on the course and my review. First, what is Save the Cat!®? Save the Cat! provides writers the resources they need to develop their screenplays and novels based on a series of best-selling books, primarily…
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Classic Memories
You never forget your first car. I know I will always remember mine—and for several reasons. First, I look back at that time in my life and realize I had no clue how much cars and insurance cost and how blessed I was to even have one on the day I turned 16. I didn’t work and save up money so that I could purchase my own car, I expected my parents (who both worked hard but did not have the funds to purchase their only child a brand-new car) to provide me with one. Looking back, I realize that was pretty presumptuous of me. Instead, my stepfather purchased a used car for…
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How I Started a Podcast
This article appears this month in the June 2020 issue of Lake Norman CURRENTS. It was while interviewing Davidson resident Stacey Simms about her Diabetes Connections podcast for CURRENTS several years ago that I first learned about podcasts. For anyone unfamiliar, a podcast is an episodic series of spoken word digital audio files that a user can download to a personal device for easy listening. There are now more than 800,000 active podcasts available worldwide, if that tells you anything about their popularity. When a friend started telling me about some true crime podcasts a few years ago, I started wading my way into the podcast waters. I loved studying the different formats,…
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Quarantine Life
It’s been a strange past month with the shelter-at-home orders here in North Carolina thanks to the spread of COVID-19. We are a fortunate household to have one adult who has been able to transition to working from home completely, and another (me) who works as a contract employee for a magazine, and I’ve also been able to keep generating income through my clients. We are blessed, because we know others who have had to temporarily close their family businesses. I feel for my kids. They miss their friends, their IRL contact, driving back and forth together to school, and randomly stopping by Dunkin’ Donuts for iced coffees and donut holes. We miss…
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My Top Five True Crime Posts
Round-ups are some of my favorite posts to read, and hopefully this one will be no exception. In this post, I’ve gathered up my top five posts all about true crime–whether it’s discussing theories behind the addiction to missing people or specific cases that have stuck with me over the years. Situational awareness. A glimpse into the dark side of humanity. The adrenaline rush. In this post, I take a deep dive into Three Reasons Female Writers are Addicted to True Crime. The Case of Mike Williams. This story out of Florida intrigued me from the moment I learned about it, from the shifty wife to the “best friend” who sold him a…
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My 2019 EOY Writing Wrap-Up
It’s Dec. 31, and a lot has happened with my writing this year. Because I’m such a fanatic about listening to EOY wrap-ups from other entrepreneurs I follow, I thought it might be a good time to go over some of the accomplishments and setbacks I’ve experienced this year. Let’s get right to it. 2019 started with a bit of a quandary. To be honest, I was working in a job that made me question my skills and talents on a regular basis. I think a lot of it was that it was a structure (the company was a nonprofit organization) that didn’t have a lot of built-in support for my position, in…
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A New Decade of Writing
It’s hard to believe we’re about to conclude another decade. I’ve been reflecting on this a bit, and marveling about how far I’ve come since I graduated from college, with a stack of credit card bills and student loans to pay off, and working two jobs so I could support myself. And even then there were plenty of days where I was eating pasta with plain tomato sauce for almost every dinner. If I wanted to get fancy I would throw some feta cheese on top. Back then, I never dreamed I could make money writing from home, and that research for a million different topics would be right at my fingertips. I…
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Setting My Intentions Each Day by Journaling
A few months ago, I heard a podcast episode that pitched the product, the “Start Today Journal.” I started to shrug it off at first, because as much as I love writing, I haven’t had too much luck with journaling over the years. But as motivational speaker and entrepreneur Rachel Hollis began explaining the methodology behind this journal, I grew more interested. What a lot of us fail at is having too many goals at one time, which can lead to overwhelm, causing us to beat ourselves up time and again when we don’t achieve any of them. Hollis developed a practice that focuses on writing down ten goals over and over. And…
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Thoughts from Me During This Crazy Time of Year
The following is my editor’s letter from the December 2019 issue of Lake Norman CURRENTS, the magazine I work for, and I wanted to share with you all here. ‘Tis the Season!
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The Realities of Seasonal Affective Disorder
This is a time of year I dread–when the days are shorter, colder and there is less sunlight to go around. I never really realized how much it affected me until the last few years. Before, I would acknowledge that yes, I tended to stay indoors more November through March and reach for the carbs, and it became more of a chore to take my dogs on our daily walks. Now, there’s no denying it. Being in my early 40s, I’ve also struggled with insomnia the past two years. I will be perfectly fine, and then once in bed, I can’t shut my mind off. I start thinking of social situations where I…