Don't be too concerned about the wingnut ears. Anxiety produces the wrong pheromones. Roll with the punches. Make time for life around your deep abiding need to write. Say Yes more, but not always. Say No enough that you have a life.

Don't be too concerned about the wingnut ears. Anxiety produces the wrong pheromones. Roll with the punches. Make time for life around your deep abiding need to write. Say Yes more, but not always. Say No enough that you have a life.

Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen has been the Queensland premier the whole time we've been in Australia, and the state is a national joke for having a Deep North government thats said to resemble governments of a generation or more ago in some parts of the US Deep South - governments that always talk about getting things done and never talk about rights.

I want my fiction to feel real most of the time, so it makes sense to pay attention to life and to how people work.

One of the things that makes characters real is details. Life offers a lot of details. You just have to choose and use them wisely. When you give them to fictional people and a fictional story, their purpose and their meaning changes, so it's best to see the version in the book as fiction entirely, wherever it started out.

The writing can be its own reward, as you discover more things that you can do. It counts a lot, though, when a story connects with a reader and they take the time to tell me about it.

I'm a plotter. A thinker, a note-maker, a mapper and a flow-charter. I'm up for using any device that will teach me more about the people I'm writing about and their story.