Laura Benedict's Blog, page 39

Rough Stuff: In Which I Discuss Being Accused of Having a Sordid Mind

This is probably one of those blogs I shouldn’t write, but impulsivity and I are old, old friends. (Remember that time I decided to wear only clothes from Wal-Mart for a year? Yeah.)

I get a lot of very generous feedback about my writing. Some of it in the form of reviews, some of it direct to my inbox. It’s the kind of feedback that keeps me going, writing the next book or story. It helps me put out the flames of self-doubt when they come shooting out of my brain, obliterating the words befor...

Thrillerfest 2014: Fun and Done

Until last week I hadn’t been to Thrillerfest, the annual gathering of International Thriller Writers, in several years. Many of my friends refuse to miss it, and I understand why: it’s great fun. Plus, it’s always held in New York City at The Grand Hyatt at Grand Central Terminal, so thereare endless thingsto do if you’re not attending panels or getting books signed. This year was the conference’s 10th anniversary, so there was lots to celebrate.

I could spend hours telling you about all the...

See the Pretty (U.K.) Cover?

There are those nights when I wake at 3 a.m. and lie there and think of all I didn’t get done the day before. It’s a terribly lonesome, hopelessfeeling. There’s no popping out of bed for a last-minute do-over, and it’s way too early (for me, anyway) to even think about getting up. If I’m particularly bothered, I’ll make a note on my nearby phone, though sometimes that leads to checking email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. so I don’t do that often. (Impulse control is not one of my strongest suits....

Heart’s Desire

The status of an interesting woman I follow on Twitter recently posited, “What’s your most surprising desire?”

I was getting ready to start my evening chores (watering the garden, kitty maintenance, closing the driveway gate), but the question pulled me up short. I felt compelled to go to the front window–one of my favorite thinking spots because it overlooks the feeders in the garden–and sit for a moment.

I am as bourgeois as a brightly-patterned Vera Bradley handbag. The desires of my now-mid...

"I Can't. I Have to Practice."

This is my childhood piano: A Baldwin spinet that was already seven or eight years old when my parents bought it. I was about nine when it came to live at our house, so we're roughly the same age. It was long both the instrument of my torture and my delight. Maybe I've written here about playing the piano before--if I have, please forgive me. I have a terrible memory. It's selective, and sometimes plays tricks on me. I honestly can't remember if anyone told me as a child if they liked hearing...

Sanctification

Today was a holiday. Holiday. Holy Day.

Officially, it was a holy day of obligation, which means I should've been at church bright and early, mindful of the children tripping over one another at the Easter egg hunt, and sharing communion with my church family. But for various reasons I didn't make it there this morning.

As a child, a holiday to me meant a mindless disregard for routine. Pleasurable abandonment. New clothes quickly wrinkled and soiled with dabs of chocolate, or even backyard dir...

Interview: Mystery Doyen Carolyn Haines and the Secrets of R.B. Chesterton

Carolyn Haines, wildly prolific author of over 70 (!) books, has been on my radar screen for a long, long time. But I've just gotten to know her a little better, and I want to introduce her to you, too.

Carolyn writes and lives way down in Alabama, and while I think she would laugh heartily at my characterizing her as a plucky southern belle, I think it's safe to say she's a very busy southern belle: She writes at least two books a year, teaches writing at a university, runs the Good Fort...

Writing Life: Listening for the Story

I'm so glad nature knows what it's doing.

Here we are at the end of March, and spring, whether winter likes it or not, is finally here. Not so as you could tell by the thermometer, but the signs are all around. The branches of my rose bushes are tipped in red, the iris and tiger lilies are pushing up through their thin blanket of fallen leaves, and the peepers are singing in the woods. The peepers started the day I returned from a quick trip to Indianapolis to visit the wonderful librarians at...

Being Present

Growth is messy.

I uploaded this photo of our ravine without taking a really good look at it. I was fixated on the late afternoon sun peeking over the hill and treetops, and thinking "light! life!" *cue angelic chorus* But seeing the whole image, I'm reminded that there's much more going on here. Buttressing the trees is an enormous amount of undergrowth. It's a 40-foot-deep ravine, full of rock shelves and dirt. The bushes and plants lining it are either completely dead or struggling for life...

Too Close

Sometimes we can be too close to a thing.
Over the past few weeks, when I've only been putting between three and four hundred words a day on the next Bliss House manuscript, I've felt as though I were operating a kind of microscope in reverse. Observing tiny dots of detail backwards through the lens, not exactly certain how they will work in the universe at large.

Or maybe a better example is a pointillist painting. Pointilism is a school of art that uses tiny dots to create a larger image. One...