Amanda Staley's Blog

It’s 9 am.  I’m sitting at my kitchen table enjoying what I thought was my third cup of coffee (my near empty coffee pot tells me I’ve miss counted), telling the boys that the trash truck is outside.  While watching the fascination on two sweet little faces, I glance around the house wondering how it… Continue reading Seasons of change with a side cognitive dissonance

Recently, two new fabulous ideas came to me while showering. I know, you are thinking big deal, a lot of writers have shower epiphanies. Well, I admit it… I am not a shower thinker. I’m a “get it and get out” kind of person. Typically, my shower consists of trying to beat the clock… one… Continue reading New ideas

I love hobbyists. I enjoy going to street festivals and looking at all the vendor booths. The wood crafts, paintings, sketches, knitted gloves and hats, crocheted afghans, paper crafts, jewelry… all of it. Some of these people engage in their craft full-time, but many it’s just a hobby they make money on seasonally. These people… Continue reading The hobby writer

I’ve been away for quite sometime. I’d love to say I was busy working on the Malcolm Stone series, but I haven’t. I am actually further behind on it now than when I last “spoke” with you all. I have scrapped the entire version I was working on and probably three or four later versions… Continue reading The slow return

This applies to life, writing, and this blog. I am in the middle a large overhaul of all three. In the coming months, look for some major changes (especially here on the blog). I know it seems that I have all but abandoned the creative life, or at least blogging about it. To be honest,… Continue reading Work in progress…

This is a response to a prompt I pulled from Alan Zielger’s Writing Workshop Note Book. Here is the prompt: Write a narrative for a short film with no dialogue. Write so that the camera operator could film directly from your story; everything should be visual and external. There are no budget limits. The film… Continue reading Silent Movie

A few weeks ago, I was thinking about how I could jump start my writing (for the past couple years my progress has been stagnant). I decided some sort of a challenge would be helpful, but I didn’t want anything as daunting as NaNoWriMo or even Camp NaNoWriMo. Word count goals and even the prospect… Continue reading 30 days of focus

I’m sure every person on face of the earth has asked themselves if they have what it takes.  One of my goals is to get back to writing this year.  I’ve started rewriting Reverie again, though this time I am actually planning and outlining it first.  I also recently started reading a book on being… Continue reading What it takes…

It has been quite sometime since I have spent any serious time writing. The last few years have been spent writing academic papers, but I have hardly spent any time writing fiction or even journaling for that matter. Now I am officially done with school and studying for the foreseeable future, but I still haven’t… Continue reading The writer who doesn’t write

Recently during one of our #CoffeehouseTalks chat, I stated I wanted to start adding more creative writing to my blog. So, here is a raw (unedited) piece that I spent about 15 to 20 mins writing while Vincent napped earlier this month. Demetri sat at the table in his dingy studio apartment wondering how he… Continue reading The Heist