Mirka Muse

  i.e. “LIKES” Ever since Blogger figured how to not count bots or any mechanical un-peopled viewers, the viewing counting on my posts wen...

  For a Whale of a tale August is beginning to look at its end. For me, this is the time to wind up the initial charting/plotting of the b...

  Or TRYING TO   It’s easy to note the negatives of this thing we group under “Social Media,” (SM for short 😈) because it’s plain to ...

  or—   “Mean Girls” are often insecure Ever walk into a room where others huddle together and, while not doing anything overtly hosti...

  There's a lot in Writers Land about opening lines and opening paragraphs. {For example, see this .} Conventional wisdom states op...

  The subject/title line is not frivolous. There are writers who feel they have one book in them, and after writing it (published or not) th...

  There is a truth universally acknowledged that a picture book writer in pursuit of le mot juste , must not make it a rhyming one. Pictur...

  We do know that, up to a point, age does bring a certain kind of wisdom— The reflective kind. Which is why, especially in the thinking...

  Another writer, lamenting the steep odds to traditional publishing, told me she doesn’t need to write and will cease writing fiction if he...

  At 3:08 am I was jolted awake by the screechiest loudest most gosh-darn scream from my cell phone. AMBER ALERT!!! AMBER ALERT!!! AMBER A...

  Make New Friends but Keep the Old Those are Silver but These are GOLD John Parry (1841-1903)   Old friends remember details we’ve ...

  In my yearly cycles, June is the epitome of loveliness and also loneliness. The latter, because there is nothing specific assigned to it. ...

 Working on becoming a better writer is one thing. Then, we have to work on becoming better proofreaders.   Not proofreading well is a p...

  Someone asked me yesterday how long it takes to write a novel. The National Novel Writing Month (=NaNoWriMo, November) makes folks who don...

  ©Brian Crane   One of my sanity-keeping strategies is to not let go of my old routines even when external forces no longer necessitate...

  Of all the “W”s of a story, (Who/Where/What/When/Why) there’s another WHY that may be the most important. Another blogger, Jennie Nash, ad...

  SO MUCH MORE I just finished reading a novel whose author, in the Acknowledgements page, thanked so many people that the page turned int...

 There are many variations on the Cinderella story. This one is different. And yes, it's scrumptious. The story of Elliot, the unrecogni...

  *Yup, I know the extra ‘m’ is not grammatical. I’m making a point   Some months ago in a writerly Facebook group, someone lamented at ...

  *{Matzah in Hebrew pronunciation. Matzo is Yiddish} The commandment to eat Matzo* to the exclusion of other bready/crackery/pastry thingie...

The title of this post is misleading in my case, because technically the money was spent by DH, which technically isn’t me.  Here goes: ...

  Those who write picture book texts know that descriptive passages are best left out for the art. But what about novels for middle grade re...

  Or— What Would I Do Instead? Our neighborhood trusted gas station/car repair shop has had the same sole owner for fifty years. I wasn’...

  Where I live, in California’s bay area, there is basically only one season. Lucky us, the season is SPRING . It goes something like th...

  Or— THIS STORIED PANDEMIC At the two-year mark of the first Covid-19 global pandemic lockdowns, it occurred to me that this life alter...

  Our lives are filled with possibilities that haven’t materialized. Stories are conjured of things that do.         When the story-well...

       & Keep Marching The month we’re ushering in, March, gets its name from Mars, the Roman god of war. The Roman calendar actually ...