writing

  • First, Happy Independence Day to my readers in the USA! Hope you all have a fantastic time at your cookouts, family gatherings, fireworks, and all the fantastic fun July 4th entails! Here we are again, at the end of another term at SNHU. This term I tackled “Speculative Fiction I” and “The Publishing Ecosystem”. I…

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  • Happy Sunday, everyone! Here in the US, and in West Virginia, today is Father’s Day, and it’s also West Virginia Day, so were celebrating double today. I managed to marry a fantastic man who is also a fantastic father to our son. So, to my sweet hubs Chris, I hope you have a fantastic Father’s…

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  • Motivation and Critique

    Now that life’s a little more calm at Marcum Manor, we can get back to the regular grind of things. School, work, home – lather, rinse, repeat. Between wrangling assignments, wrangling co-workers, and wrangling family members (both of the un-fuzzy and fuzzy variety), I stay pretty exhausted most of the time. That’s okay, though. How…

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  • On the MFA Treadmill

    Here we are again, at the end of the first week of my 4th term in pursuit of my MFA in creative writing. I’m taking two classes this term – “Speculative Fiction I” and “The Publishing Ecosystem.” I think that of the two, I’m going to enjoy Spec Fic I quite a bit more than…

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  • Hey everyone! For this term of MFA, it’s finals week – both my projects are due tonight by midnight. The good news is, I turned the last one in yesterday afternoon. The bad news? Well…my “N” key has given up the ghost and there’s no way to fix it, and I had to order a…

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  • Why Does It Matter?

    So, I know that on “Workin’ On It Wednesday” I said that this Sunday I would talk about the writer’s toolbox (and believe me, we’ll get to it eventually), but I think I want to address something that’s been on my mind all week. But first… As of this writing, the word count for the…

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  • Good Sunday, and I hope you’ve had a good (and productive!) week – around these parts, I’ve had a bit of a lazy week, and haven’t really made much progress on anything this week. It hasn’t been a particularly difficult week, and I haven’t been overly-busy, I’ve just lacked motivation to get much of anything…

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  • Good Sunday, everyone, and (if you celebrate it) I hope you’re having a fantastic Easter celebration today! For the “housekeeping” part of today’s post, I wanted to mention something that I started earlier this week over on my Facebook page and Twitter feed. I started something I’m calling “Working On It Wednesdays” where I give…

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  • This week has been a difficult one in the Marcum household. On Tuesday, my beloved mother-in-law passed away. She had been ill for quite a long time, and due to COVID we had not visited in a while, but it doesn’t make it any easier. If anything, an expected death when you didn’t have a…

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  • Yesterday, March 20, was the first day of spring 2021, and weather-wise, it looks like it’s going to be a nice one! Today is a beautiful, sunny day, and even though the temperature is a little cool, I may just spend some time on the back deck today and soak up some vitamin D while…

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