Anne R. Allen's Blog... with Ruth Harris
Writing about writing. Mostly.
by Ruth Harris What Ray Bradbury called the muse, Stephen King calls the “guys in the basement.” Others call it the sixth sense, the Spidey sense, or intuition. Whatever you call it, your subconscious — the thoughts you don’t know you’re thinking — is what makes the magic happen. These unknown thoughts occur below the […]
Charisma can have a dangerous side by Ruth Harris You know who they are. The superstars. The BFDs. They get the best tables, fly private, live on palatial estates. They are the ones who Have. It. All. They’re actors, influencers, corporate honchos, entertainers, TV personalities, rock stars, religious leaders, politicians and presidents. They’re the Superstars, […]
by Ruth Harris Why is cooking — often? usually? sometimes? — more appealing than writing? *Even if you’re only a halfway decent cook, just about everyone will eat and enjoy what you made — and tell you so. * If you’re only a halfway decent writer, no one will enjoy what you wrote — or will […]
by Ruth Harris My encounters with reader mail go back a long way. My first job as a very young editor at Bantam included slogging through the slush pile and answering reader mail. No internet or email those days. Everything was done the old fashioned way — by hand. I’ve written before about my adventures in […]
by Ruth Harris Between Covid and lockdown rules, cabin fever and cooking, sour dough and sour moods, 2020 is—finally!—dragging to an end. Anne dealt with non-Covid-related debilitating health issues. I had to navigate NYC’s soaring Covid infection rates. She had a meltdown involving a TV remote. I had one triggered by laundry. The good news is that with […]
Now authors can make DIY book covers with easy-to-use, drag-and-drop design apps by Ruth Harris In the early days of self-publishing, authors who didn’t know know coding had to hire formatters to make their books cyber-ready. Since then, formatting has become part of many writing programs. Word processors like MSWord, Scrivener and Pages will output […]
