Amy Reichert

Now that the turkey is eaten, dishes washed, Christmas decorations up, and carols belting from my ipod, I’m in full on panic mode. I have two weeks to nail down my pitch – a mere sixty seconds of information. And I can’t do it. My stomach is roiling just thinking about it. I find my pathetic inability to do this very frustrating. To put this in context, I am not a shy person; nor do I mind speaking in front of groups. I studied to be a teacher and worked as a teaching assistant during grad school (which meant teaching…

Bang! Thunk! Crash! Pardon me if the noise is a little loud, I’m dismantling my book. Boom! I just blew up the first chapter.  Thank God we don’t build houses the way we write novels. Most novels get written, then blown up, rewritten, then blown up again, and so on. Imagine if we built a house, blew it up, built it again, blew it up again – you get the point. So, I’ve gotten my first round of feedback from my beta readers. Almost unanimously, they said the first few chapters dragged. I went back and looked at them. Guess…

You know how you spend hours (maybe even days) vacuuming every room in your house, dusting every surface, washing every dish, scrubbing every toilet, and putting everything in its place. You’re exhausted but proud of the monumental task you’ve finished. The house looks great, it’s ready for family , guests, or for you to enjoy by yourself. You, dear reader, feel at peace. Then you glance under a bed or behind a couch only to find a stray sock or stack of dusty papers. What else did you miss, you ask yourself? You go from room to room, finding hidden…

In one of the more anal retentive moves of my lifetime, I’ve scheduled all my To-Dos between now and my writing conference in New York. I have even planned what meals I’ll cook each day. With so much to do like Christmas shopping, planning a birthday party, and hosting Thanksgiving, I’m worried I’ll let my editing and conference prep wait till the last minute. In an effort to avoid that cluster%&$*, I got organized. So now I have my Master Plan readily accessible at all times – available for reference any time I stare longingly at the couch, or blankly…

You know that dream, where you show up to school (or the office, or a Packer game, or center stage during the monologue of Saturday Night Live) without a stitch of clothing. You know you’re naked, but you can’t find clothes (or won’t – some people are into that – I don’t judge…much). Maybe you go about your business hoping no one will notice, until one person realizes your hairy chest is not a ratty sweater. Then everyone turns to stare – people noting your flabby abs, sagging bits, and ancient stretch marks. Now throw some snickering into the background…

Do you have a story lingering in the back recesses of your mind, taking up precious gray matter, clanking around like an angry ghost? It’s that time of year to exercise those writing ghosts, let them lose to limbo across the page (or computer screen if you prefer to type), leaving piles of steaming ghost droppings (the droppings are very important, more on this later). What am I talking about? Why NaNoWriMo of course. Still clueless, dear reader? NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is a movement where many aspiring novelists attempt to word-barf 50,000 words of story in thirty…

I’m still reading through my manuscript (I know, it’s taking forever). In my defense, I spent the weekend pretending to be 21 again with my college girls (note to self – I am no longer 21). While fun was had by all, I’m woefully behind on my editing. But a few late nights, and I’ll be caught up. That’s one perk to being a lover of the late night. My editing process has reverted to my college days too. When I wrote papers for classes, I’d type out my draft, print it, then make my edits by hand.  I’ve never…

This time of year I always get a bit nostalgic, this year more than most. Fifteen years ago this month I left for a 12 week trip to England. Where I went to college, the Education department had a unique program where you could do half your student teaching overseas (in an English speaking country of course – I tremble at the thought of trying to teach English in German – the horror, the horror*). Our curriculum was so tight – it made the study-abroad experience difficult to fit in and still graduate in four years; this was a happy…

Edit. Edit. Edit. This has become my mantra, a focal point to keep me on task. Now that I’ve told me story, I want to wander off toward the next shiny object. I have a short story idea bouncing around, two new novel ideas I want to test out, and a trip to New York to plan. This last is the most exciting and distracting. I’m attending my first official writing conference in December. Technically, it isn’t even a traditional conference – where you have sessions discussing the future of ebooks, how to build tension into your scenes, and how…

Have you ever driven somewhere only to arrive at your destination not remembering anything about the journey (please, don’t be just me)? Your mind wandered off, leaving your body to self-guide a two ton vehicle onward. It turns out, writing can be a little like that (again, please don’t be just me). But with writing, someone else helps take the wheel (more on this later – though I could argue St. Christopher is often present while I’m driving). I finally finished rereading my entire book, creating an outline as I went so I can see where I need to add…