Congratulations to all those bloggers who successfully completed the April A to Z Blogging Challenge!  Sadly, I burned out about halfway through.  However, I did learn some things along the way. First of all, I learned that while it has been asserted that one should write every day, it is important to start slowly and build up endurance.  You don’t start an exercise program by trying to run a marathon.  Writing is hard work, especially if you’re not independently wealthy with

A very good friend of mine once said, “It’s better to be a big fish in a small pond, than a small fish in a big pond.” He was referring to his Maui Wowi Hawaiian business, but I think it also applies to most anything. But it’s a funny thing about fish in bowls:  it isn’t necessarily true that a fish will only grow as large as the tank will allow. Long ago, my parents once had a 40 gallon fish tank, in which – among the mollies, neon tetras, and tiger barbs – they kept the req

The very first thing I did in 2010 when I started blogging is a series of A to Z posts.  I tend to write only when I’m inspired and having a plan of sorts helped keep me consistent and focused.  It also dampened my fear.  For me, writing requires that I expose a bit of my soul, and that continues to be a source of anxiety that I must overcome. Last year, I found the A to Z Blogging Challenge and decided to re-blog all of my original alphabet posts because I had met so many ne

When I was about ten or eleven years old, I wrote my very first fictional short story.  It just popped into my head and I wrote it down.  To this day, I can remember the storyline and how it felt to write it.  I think it may have even been “published” in the school newspaper, but that wasn’t the point.  I had to write it.  I didn’t have a choice.  And I loved it. Later on in high school, I wrote a research paper on dragons.  My parents worked at the University of Chicago and

A friend challenged me to compose a complete story in 100 words or less which had to include the phrase “then Jen showed Tawn her otterbox.”  Never one to back down from a gauntlet thrown at my feet, I came up with the following micro-story.  Note: I did cheat just a little bit by not including the 6 word phrase in my total word count.  My entry comes to exactly 106 words.  Enjoy! Giggling, the two girls scurried one by one up the gently swaying rope ladder to the rickety tre

I noticed this in my WordPress Spam folder today: “The next time I read a blog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as much as this one. I mean, I know it was my choice to read, but I actually thought youd have something interesting to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something that you could fix if you werent too busy looking for attention.” Intending to callously delete this comment, I abruptly paused with my index finger hovering over the left mouse button.  Wha

Dear TotallyTawn readers, I wanted to give you a little Valentine’s Day gift – my special short story released today from Big World Network: Love Never Dies: A Zombie Love Story Just click the image to go to the series page to read or listen to it for free. In addition, I think it’s time for TotallyTawn to evolve.  I never really had a plan when I started blogging.  I certainly never thought that I would discover such wonderful writers as Snoring Dog Studio, Peg-o-Leg’s Rambl

When I was a morose teenager, I wrote a poem I called “Life’s Road.”  Like most angst-ridden hormonal prose, it was never really meant to be shared.  It was just a method for me to purge some of my juvenile emotions.  Here’s what I can remember: Life’s road is filled with many twists and turns And from tragedy to tragedy, one never learns That the potholes in the Road are meant to be Small reminders throughout history That we must pick ourselves up and dust off the dirt And l