Meg Wolfe's Blog, page 3

Anxiety and the Writing Life

The barriers of anxiety.

This has been a long year of anxiety attacks, despite the fact that there hasn’t been much cause for it in my life. All around me, things have been rolling along pretty much as usual, but inside of me it has been a different story.

Now, a certain amount of anxiety can be useful. For instance, the awareness of time running out can cause anxiety, but it can also be a good motivator. I’m in my sixties, and the awareness that I don’t have forever is part of what gets me u...

At the Midpoint of a Novel

A new red mug.

I’ve hit the midpoint of a new novel, and that’s always a good time to come up for air and take a look around. “Coming up for air” literally as well as figuratively. After my last post–four months ago–I came down with yet another head and chest cold that lingered and eventually morphed into bronchitis. Went to the doc, got the meds, stopped the hacking–and kept on feeling terrible. Work was a slog. Social plans fell to the side. Then my doc decided to leave town and I had to sh...

The Really Important Stuff

Winter still point.

I’ve tried three different times to write a blog post in the past month, and each time it just didn’t feel right, somehow. The one I just deleted before starting the one you’re reading now was 823 words long, about a new writing process I am trying out. But it felt like I was trying to avoid writing about thereally important stuff.

A bad cold knocked me off my stride in January, surprising because I am usuallyable to keep working through the ups and downs of health. Things...

The Consistency of Sixty-One Christmases

A shiny sun

This is my sixty-first Christmas season, and a rather nice one. I’ve been mindful and even frugal for the past several holidays, but this year I had an inexplicably overwhelming urge to do a little more. A lot of it is because my granddaughter Ellie is twenty-two months old and clearly comprehends that something nifty is going on. She’s a third-generation only child, so there’s none of that houseful of screaming kids hilarity that I recall from holiday visits to my mother’s sister...

A Chance to Win 30 Crime Novels

30 of ’em!

Recently I was honored to be asked by crime fiction writerSue Coletta to take part in a holiday raffle with 29 other terrific crime and mystery authors . And yes, the prize is 30 novels! There is nothing to buy, just enter with your email address, plusthere are multiple chances to enter via Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Here’s the link to the post at Sue’s blog, which has every one of the books offered, their descriptions, and links to Amazon: Win 30 Crime Novels

Happy holidays...

Minimalism and the Writing Life

Just me and the keyboard.

If you’ve arrived here via my formerblog, The Minimalist Woman, you’ll be familiar with the pared-down simplicity that forms the heart of a minimalist lifestyle. If you’ve arrived here via my novels, you might be mystified.Either way,this isa good time for me to sharewhy it is still relevant for me to practiceminimalism in my everyday writing life.

Minimalism, as a philosophy, is basically having enough and not more. The precise amount varies from person to person. S...

An Undisclosed Vocation is Now Available on Amazon

The long-awaited day is finally here!An Undisclosed Vocationis up and running on Amazon, and is available in both Kindle and print editions. Amazon hasn’t linked both editions on the same landing page as of this writing, so, if you like, you can click here for the Kindle version and here for the print version. Right now the Kindle editions of all three books of the series are priced at 99 cents, handy for the holidays and sharing with others you think might enjoy them.

One of the things I’m m...

Everything’s Coming Together and Looking Good

Screen shot from this morning.

Woke up this morning to discover that my first Charlotte Anthony mystery,An Uncollected Death, made the Amateur Sleuth best seller list on Amazon. That was several hours ago, and I’ve still got a stupid grin on my face. It means that everything’s coming together and looking good–itmightnot be the the stuff of those Best Seller lists in the New York Times or even of a site-wide general list on Amazon, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction: upwards.

I...

The Neighbors are Coming

The times are a-changin’

So I was sitting here, busily getting in some wordage for NaNoWritMo, when the floor shook, my chair bounced, and my coffee threatened to slosh over the top of the cup–then again, and again. It could only mean one thing: the beginning of the end of having no neighbors.

I went outside to double-check, and there was indeed a large backhoe whamming away at the curbs and asphalt of the parking lot that’s two lots away. When that is cleared out, they’ll probably start digg...

The Author and the Woman as One

Home is where the mug is.

The integration of my everyday self and my author self is one of the coolest things to happen this year. It developed organically, naturally. This does not mean that my fiction is autobiographical, or that I’m confusing fiction with reality, but that I’m writing from my own authentic point of view, whether it’s fiction or creative nonfiction.

It wasn’t easy (at least for me) to do this right off the bat, especially for the fiction. If you’ve ever tried to write a nov...