Tweet It’s been too long since I posted here. And hopefully I will have good news to share soon. I have a lot of plans for 2024. Do you? I’m going to redo this website, continue to write for kids and the environment. Personally, I’m also focusing on my health in 2024. You know how you always say that, but health is kind of the last thing on your resolutions list? After being hit with a lot of viruses these last few Covid years and then getting what appears to be Long-Covid, which I’m still recovering from, I’m not just…
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Tweet I so admire my very talented writer friend Kamalani Hurley for her tenaciousness at posting and creating relevant content about Native Hawaiian and local artists. As for me, my time is mostly spent taking online courses to beef up my knowledge of coaching and working on revising my picture book on Hawaii sugar plantations. As a writer for more than 15 years, I still feel like a beginner. Every day it’s about showing up when the laundry needs to be done and my kids need me for everything. To be honest, I nearly lost my writing mojo last month…
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Tweet The air has shifted. Even here in Hawaii, there’s a slight change in the seasons. The days are getting longer. It’s time to store my sweaters away sadly and I’m back to my usual tank top shorts uniform. Seasons are light bulb reminders externally of things we need to shed inside. While we declutter and spring clean to make ready for summer, there are things we can do as writers to check-in, to make sure we’re still where we need to be. This can look like ordering more paper, getting a fun new journal or laptop. It could mean…
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Tweet Questions like these are stereotypical because it often plays into the idea that one person can speak for an entire community of people. Also that the experience of being a minority makes things like writing completely different when all writers suffer and struggle to throw words onto a blank page. There are a few things, however, that I can speak to. And if you are Asian American and write, could possible relate. If you wonder: if your work isn’t connecting and you’re receiving rejections because it doesn’t resonate with the majority culture. if your work is chosen preciously because…
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Tweet Usually when writers blog it’s because they’re already published or about to be. But I’m blogging in real time, before I’m an author or agented so you can know what the journey is really like. Here’s the truth of it. While there have been wonderful news like having my first children’s story published with audio and illustrations to boot, an article in ASJA magazine and an essay published in spring for a journal I’m super excited to eventually share, there have been rejections. Or no news. My 2020 PBChat mentorship has ended and I haven’t left with an agent…
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Tweet Do you know the mirage? The place that looks like a gorgeous lake, but is really a glorified puddle? This is everything we post on social media-the fancy writer gig, our new book, and all the writer activities we’re apart of. It’s all nice and sparkling. Everyone watching wants to jump right in. The problem with mirages is that they’re not real. Perhaps, all of that is true. But it puts observers on the outside, it separates us, and makes us feel alone. If you pan out from the image, you’d see that we’re all watching the mirage-that vast…
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Tweet It’s a story I seldom tell, but needs to be told… I got a degree in English, but never believed I could actually make a profession out of it so I squandered those early years taking whatever job looked intriguing and didn’t require experience. Every afternoon, I’d pull out the jobs section of the newspaper and became everything from an usher to a research assistant and even a private investigator. Looking back, there were oodles of gems to pull from. All those late nights with my homemade burrito wrapped in foil surveying the area for criminal activity or working…
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Tweet I’ve always been a storyteller. I should say, “I’ve always told stories.” This was to the chagrin of my elementary school classmates who hid from me because they couldn’t stand to hear yet another story. You would think this would clue me into my lifelong dream of writing fiction especially when I have a blog all about finding your purpose. But so it is with things that are precious to you. You build walls around it as you get older so no one can touch it. As I began taking writing courses to fulfill my degree in English literature,…
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Tweet I haven’t been blogging here lately because I’ve been in a whirlwind of writing. I realized while lying in bed that there is madness to my process. I can drum up ideas quite quickly and when I do, there are a few steps that fuel my inspiration through the hard, stuck, I-can’t-write-another-thing parts. I steal moments to write. Before I had kids, I had all kinds of time to write. But I spent it mostly pretending to write while I lavishly devoured the hours because there were so many of them. These days, I’m usually giving a kid a…
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Tweet The deeper you get into your work, the harder it is to separate your self from what you’re working on. You’ll notice that the more passionate, the more involved you are, the more the deep dark stuff of your unconscious seeps out. It’s easier to live life on the surface. That way when rejection happens, it doesn’t hurt as much. You failed, but you didn’t care anyway. But what happens when what you’re failing at means the world to you? It hits at your core, purpose, and sense of self-worth. If you’re writing about a company, it stings a…