Unlike so many well-intentioned but ill-fated New Year’s resolutions, if yours is to finally write that novel you’ve been dreaming about for years, you’ve chosen one that’s easy to keep. The “write my novel in 2014” resolution is ambitious but doable, and comfortably so. Unlike the marathon of National Novel Writing Month, the novel-in-a-year plan […]
What to give the attorney who has everything? ‘Tis the season for that challenging question. Perhaps Scott Turow’s newest, “Identical” (Grand Central Publishing), Chicago attorney Thomas R. Leavens’ “Music Law for the General Practitioner (ABA) or, hey, even my own “Courting Kathleen Hannigan” (Ampersand) or “Warming Up” (She Writes Press)? That would be so […]
Happy to say I finished NaNoWriMo with the first very rough draft of an untitled novel that might be in a unique genre called Christian Legal PsychoDrama. But it’s at least a year away from seeing the light of day. Just happy to have the “clay” for the coming year. Thanks to The Office of […]
November is National Novel Writing Month — or “NaNoWriMo” for short. The idea is that you start writing a novel on Nov. 1 and, even though the month is one day shy of “normal,” you will produce a novel by midnight on Nov. 30. The organizers, a “tiny but mighty” nonprofit called the Office of […]
Amicus Script or sidebar to my Law Bulletin October column, published Nov. 1. HOW TO WRITE A LOT OF WORDS FAST. 1. Set a timer for 50 minutes. Start writing. 2. Inhabit a scene. See, hear and write everything. 3. Dissect an action — write it out in excruciating, step-by-step detail. 4. Examine […]
My friend Andy Goldstein was honored by Lawyers for the Creative Arts as the winner of the Thomas Leavens Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts, and I had the pleasure of presenting the award at a luncheon at the Empire Room of the the Palmer House October 24. A small reunion of former Sidley & […]
Here’s my guest blog post on SheWrites.com’s Behind the Book. The other day I autographed my novel, Warming Up, published by She Writes Press, for a friend of a friend who I was told was a writer herself. Since my novel is, in part, about talented artists who are unable, at the start of the […]
For WARMING UP, a top ten award in the Writers Digest Self-Pubbed Book Awards, mainstream fiction category.
Amicus Scriptor September 27, 2013 Last month, I encouraged you to submit your story or self-contained novel excerpt to a magazine, journal or contest. And today, you may be all ready to go — story polished, guidelines followed, deadline still pending in the future. But perhaps you haven’t yet worked up the […]
BY JENN BALLARD LAW BULLETIN STAFF WRITER After 37 years of practice, Mary HutchingsReed is accustomed to interpreting the law for her clients. “I practice in an area w here my clients tend not to be law yers,” she said of her w ork handling marketing, advertising, trademark, copyright and entertainment law matters. “I tend to work […]