Some of you know that years ago I used to step up to microphones wearing my Fender Mustang bass on a purple strap and announce, “I am Regina Rodríguez and I sing songs I made up out of my own head.” For many years writing and performing songs was the main way I coped...
A rare short story by me.
I've been scraping around for about a week now, missing my post-husband (I call him that because we'll be legally divorced in a few months), feeling the emptiness of my beautiful one-bedroom apartment, crying, EFT tapping, resting and then crying more. I understand...
Recently someone who called herself "Deb" commented on one of my posts: Wow. You are such a mess and so damn proud of it. I responded, "Thank you," but I actually wish I were proud of it. The truth is that it's not correct to say I'm proud of being a mess, however...
Last spring I created a first draft of my memoir with the working title "I Never Wanted a Dog." I found some readers to give me feedback on it, thinking I'd start revising at the end of June. Then I found myself facing divorce, my mother reached the final weeks of her...
Failure gets such bad press, but it really doesn't deserve it. Who cares if you fail? It doesn't mean your life is over (unless your failure causes your death). I'm a big failure and I'll tell you all about it. My first failure was leaving Cornell University in 1993...
Ozzie's a 50-pound pit bull mix with crazy ears. We've had Ozzie for a year and a half now and he's probably about 5 years old at this point (not sure because we got him from a shelter and they weren't sure of his age). For the first full year that we had him, I...
http://writeclubrules.com The first rule of Write Club is to tell five to seven other people about Write Club, so here I go. Write Club takes two writers and gives them opposing themes to write an essay about. They prepare this essay ahead of time and it must take no...
Dear Person Reading My Blog Right Now: If you wouldn't mind leaving me a comment, I'd hugely appreciate it. A lot of the hits that any blog gets are automated search engines and websites. So if I see that my blog got 30 visits, that really means that some fraction of...
I'm proud of myself for finishing the first (very) rough draft of my book about what it's been like to own my first dog. I have no delusions about finding an agent, but will publish it myself as an ebook that the whole world can read. If it wants...
I just completed the 30-day, 50,000-word NaNoWriMo challenge! I'm so excited. It's over! It's over! Now I order my NaNoWriMo winner's t-shirt and watch tv for a month. (Yes, I'll get back to turning it into a real ebook, but first I take a break from brilliance.)
National Novel Writing Month 2012 is almost over. This has been my first time doing it and in just a few more days of wild-eyed typing, I'll hit the 50,000-word goal which will make me a winner. What do I win? It's kind of like a marathon: if you complete the...
We are now ten days into National Novel Writing Month, also called NaNoWriMo. Each year during this month, thousands of people from all over the world take a stab at producing a 50,000-word draft of a novel in just four weeks. Since November has 30 days, that means...
November is National Novel Writing Month (commonly called NaNoWriMo). Each year thousands of people take a shot at producing 50,000 words between November 1st and 30th. This year I'm joining in. What do you do when you find yourself the owner of a dog who does such...
I started my blog in June 2004 because I read an article on blogging and discovered that I fit the criteria of a good blogger: I spent hours in front of a computer every day and liked to write. It was probably presumptuous to think that my blog would be interesting to...