writing

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Point of View: Picking Up Where I Left Off

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man on a cliff with an umbrella - deposit photos

December was a rough month. January was a rough month. February was a rough month. March… well, we’ll see. So far it hasn’t been grand. I like to write a bit every day, but lately life, stress, and the pile-up of things to do has gotten the better of me. I’m lucky if I can manage to write once or twice a week. Which right now is just enough to keep my blog serial Down the River going. Part of it, too, is a schedule in turmoil, and persistent insomnia that leaves me unwilling or unable to get up early … Read more

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Point of View: Adrift

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adrift - deposit photos

If you’re anything like Mark and I, you’re probably feeling a bit lost at sea right now. Our new Administration here in the US has turned everything upside down – black is White, Zelensky is Putin, and all the lies are now true. Or at least they will be once they finish beating us over the head with them. The weather here in Northern California is vacillating between super cold and rainy and too warm for February, suggesting a hot summer to come. I’ve now been looking for a job now for sixteen months. I interview, they love me, they … Read more

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Point of View: The Great Escape

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Man staring at buildings made of books - deposit photos

I can’t bear it. I can’t let myself think too far ahead right now. I know the awful is coming, and for a few more precious weeks, I just want to bury my head in the sand like they say ostriches do (even though they don’t, really). So I’m looking for a few all-encompassing escapes. One of those is popular entertainment. Mark and I are binging the whole Ally McBeal series, which was from the late nineties and dealt with grand themes like misogyny in the workplace, which thankfully no longer exists (this is where I really need a sarcasm … Read more

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Point of View: Writing (Really) Short

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Haiku - Deposit Photos

Over the last eight years, we’ve constantly been searching to cope with a world turned upside down. Mark and I have tried a variety of self-care methods – long showers, walks through the neighborhood, spending time in a coffee shop. But last year we discovered a new method. The daily haiku. The New York Times had an article about expressing yourself this way, and we thought “what the heck?” So we started sending each other a short poem each morning, encapsulating our hopes, fears, dreams and delights in seventeen syllables a day. We’ve since shared the practice with a few … Read more

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Point of View: It Matters What We Do, and that We Do It

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artist - deposit photos

I recently saw a disturbing quote from Elon Musk (I know – is there any other kind?): “It’s hard to say exactly what that moment is, but there will come a point where no job is needed,” the tech billionaire said. “You can have a job if you want to have a job — sort of personal satisfaction — but the AI will be able to do everything.” I normally try to keep this column (and my life in general) a Musk-free zone, but I think he’s getting at something important here. We are moving into an era where it’s … Read more

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Point of View: The Wonderful, Terrible Act of Writing

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meme

I realized long ago that it’s possible to hold two entirely contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time, both of them equally valid. For instance, I can hear about a fellow author’s success – let’s say they won a contest that I also entered my own book into (and lost). I can be thrilled at their success and sad for my own loss. Both of these things are valid, and one doesn’t negate the other. That’s how it is with my relationship with writing. There’s nothing I’d rather do than be writing, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do … Read more

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Point of View: The (Questionable) Wisdom of Writing Four Things at Once

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Man with lots of ideas - deposit photos

My therapist thinks I have ADHD tendencies. That’s a fancy way of saying that I’m happiest when I am multitasking. I love round-robining through three different things at once, doing a bit on each until I wrap all of them up with pretty bows on top. Another way of saying this is that I’m a high-functioning ADHDer. I’ve learned to work with those tendencies, and to make them work for me. This came up again recently in my writing life. I’ve been stalled out on my latest WIP, my first “Forever Cycle” novel that seems to have me stuck in … Read more

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Review: Suck a Little Happy Juice

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Suck a Little Happy Juice - J. Scott Coatsworth

Just got a great review for Suck a Little Happy Juice from D.B. at Paranormal Romance Guild: Get It On Amazon | Universal Buy Link Unlike most of my reviews, this book isn’t fiction therefore it required me to rethink how I usually review books. So, bear with me as I review my first non-fiction book: Theme: Writing is hard, but it’s also sorta fun. My initial thought was that the author must’ve truly enjoyed writing this book. There’s a lot of humor embedded throughout, which made reading it a lot more fun. This was especially important for me, since for the … Read more

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Point of View: It’s the People

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friends - deposit photos

It’s been a rough few months. We’ve recently lost a couple friends to cancer, and found out a couple more have it too. Other friends are fighting unknown maladies that have reduced their lives to misery. My Mac died, and was in the shop for two agonizing weeks before it finally came home. I broke my arm for the second time in October, and then Mark and I got a really bad cold in December. Facebook temporarily kicked me off, scaring me half to death. A great job I really wanted didn’t even bother giving me an interview, and I … Read more

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Cover Reveal / Preorder: Suck a Little Happy Juice

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Suck a Little Happy Juice - J. Scott Coatsworth

I’ve finally gone and done it. I’ve gathered all of my copious columns on writing, typed out on my blog (and a few other places) over the last eight years, and have mashed them into a book for indie writers. 🙂 And yeah, the title. I decided on it years ago, when I wrote a column of the same name. The key passage: We need to bottle up all those great things [that happen to us as writers] and put them away, ready to be opened at a later date when things don’t seem quite so rosy. When imposter syndrome … Read more