Karen Douglass, Author

Karen Douglass, Author: Prose & Poetry

Tag: free advice on writing

  • Frozen Stiff

    She’s frozen by indecision and fear. Fear of boring people, fear of not writing a helpful piece that answers the so-what question, the why-should-anyone read what she has to say. She’s not famous, not a celebrity from the cover of a magazine. OMG! She makes more coffee, listens to more music, takes a shower–anything to…

  • Beta Readers

    Networking–aka, hanging out with other writers–is one of my favorite things. My writerly friends are smart, funny, open-minded folk spread all over central Colorado. Yesterday I went to Boulder in the morning to talk about climate-change fiction, at noon to Arvada for lunch with five poetically oriented friends, and later that day to Denver to meet three other writers in…

  • Runaway Words, Lost in Time

    Last week I blogged about the writer’s checklist and posted a short form of what might keep an otherwise disorganized writing project on track. That was such a good idea. Too bad I didn’t take my own advice. As some of my friends know, I’m working on a sequel to Accidental Child, and I’ve been…

  • The Slothful Writer

      Yesterday my pen was on fire. I dashed off sentences like I knew what I was doing. I went to a workshop and delivered on the exercises. It felt wonderful. Today there’s a sloth in my house and it’s me. I had to drag myself by the hair over here to the desk, which is…

  • If It Works for Gawande

    Recently I caught a TED talk by one of my favorite authors, Atul Gawande. He spoke about the positive effects of having OR teams use a checklist before starting a procedure. He had gone to airline pilots to help him and his team design the list. Flyers have long used pre-flight checklists. The surgical results were dramatic in terms…