Home of the Bellingwood Series – Nammynools

The Ballad of Bells Dell

Mom wrote this five years after she and Dad purchased the land. There are grand stories about things that happened heard in Iowa’s early days that have long since been lost been lost. She alludes to some and I don’t know if I’ll ever find them

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Bell’s Dell Reverie – A Short Story

I wrote this quite a few years ago. This describes the home of my heart, a beautiful spot in the woods that has been part of our family since 1964, the year my brother was born. The original owner of the land was a man

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Organized Chaos … or a Left-Brained Creative

Last night I was chatting with a friend about the fact that I build time for procrastination into my schedule. I know that I’m going to do it, so rather than worry about not accomplishing everything, I just plan to procrastinate. I am creative, but

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You Are Unique (and a Progress Bar)

When I was a child, I had a few tough years. We lived in a tiny town in eastern Iowa. There were twenty-three kids in my class and I didn’t fit in with those girls. There was one ‘clique’ of girls that weren’t terribly friendly, with

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Progress

My writing progress stunk last week. We’ll get to that in a minute. I actually had a lot of fun signing and shipping books. I gave away more paperback copies than ever this time and that was exciting for me. There is nothing I love more

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Writing and More Writing

When I get busy with a million other things, I find that it’s difficult to keep writing. For the last several weeks I’ve been editing like crazy. I worked with my brother on his book, Parley. Then, on Bellingwood Book 7 – Tomorrow’s Promises. Once

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Book 7 – Tomorrow’s Promises

You’d think that after publishing books and short stories for the last year and a half, I’d be used to it by now. Maybe it would become mundane and not quite so exciting. That just isn’t my reality. I still get fluttery in my stomach

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Making the Lizard Brain Scream for Mercy

Seth Godin calls it the Lizard Brain. Steven Pressfield calls it Resistance. Honestly, for me, it’s just plain fear. Every single time I get close to finishing a book, I balk at the thought of it and can find a million reasons to avoid writing. The

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Come On In

I processed through the opening words of this post and my heart lurched around like a drunken soldier when I realized that I was about to type “30 years ago.” Whoa. Anyway … Thirty years ago, Mom asked if I would open a business with her. I was still trying

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What ‘cha doing, Diane?

The sun is shining, the cicadas are singing, the river is slowly finding its way back into its banks, the cat is asleep beside me (it’s the middle of the day, where else would he be?), and it’s time for me to settle down and

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