Blab-o-Denise (aka Denise's blog)
My weekly blog about all things writerly--the joy, the pain, the unexpected and surprising
How Many Lightbulbs Does It Take To Make a Story?
"...I slowly make up the story, and rewrite it several times, and each time I rewrite it, I get new ideas, and change the old ideas around. ~ Louis Sachar So this past weekend I rewrote one of my picture books for what felt like the zillionth time. Okay, that's an...
Change Beliefs That Hold You Back
"Believe you can and you're halfway there." ~ Theodore Roosevelt "Believe in yourself." Ack. What does that even mean? Give me specifics! That's what I hope to do today. One of the things I talked about at the Spring Spirit Conference in Sacramento this past weekend...
Spring Renewal: Writers and Websites
"The only sense that is common in the long run is the sense of change---and we all instinctively avoid it." ~ E. B. White Change. That's what life is all about, isn't it? Our very bodies slough off cells and create new ones. We are different today than we were...
Priority vs. To Do List
I've been listening to Mel Robbins, speaker and author of The 5 Second Rule: Transform your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage. No, it has nothing to do with picking food off the floor. 🙂 In one of her videos, she talks about creating a "priority"...
Book Birthday!
Tuesday was the official release of my new picture book, If Your Monster Won't Go to Bed! Such a magical day, with lots of well-wishers and excitement. I felt so, so grateful to be part of such an amazing community---of writers, friends, and family---each a part of...
Stories as Support
If you subscribe to my e-newsletter, you received a link to an article on Tuesday. The article covered a Children's Book Council panel talking about trends in children's books, but also what some booksellers and librarians are hearing in terms of what...
Busting an Idea Wide Open
So back in 2015 I had an idea for a picture book that I thought was brilliant. Let's call it PB1. I worked on various revisions, got feedback, revised some more, sent it to my agent, got more feedback and then...we agreed it was ready to submit. We got a lot of...
Writer Back from Paradise: Tips for Re-entry
I had every intention of writing a post last Thursday. After all, we returned late Tuesday night and I had Wednesday to do it. Ha. Between sleep deprivation, the time change, and a mountain of other things, I completely forgot---in spite of the reminder that pops up...
Writer in Paradise: The Sailing Writer
This post will be short and sweet because we got on a catamaran on Tuesday and are sailing around the British Virgin Islands! It's possible I would have wifi on the boat, but I didn't want to count on that so I wrote this the night before--on Monday, February 6. I...
Writer in Paradise: Adjusted Expectations
So yes. I had to adjust my expectations during my "big week" of writing/revising the NaNoWriMo novel. This was one of the few times I had 8+ hours a day to work on a book and I envisioned myself cranking through the hard copy, making notes to myself and finishing in a...
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