Jeff O'Handley

The Doubting Writer Finds His Voice

On Dynasties

Most of the people in my life that I know are from New York, especially Long Island and the New York City region. This was made all the more clear last night, when my Facebook feed erupted in gloating after the Denver Broncos defeated the New England Patriots in last night’s AFC title game. No […]

This and That Monday

Another Monday morning in blogland. Yesterday was spent on the road; the Catbird went back to school after a nice month home, and I’m finding that, the older I get, the more long drives wear me out. So, this will be one of those days where I’m just meandering around a bit, as opposed to […]

On the Cusp

A funny thing happened while I’ve been griping and grumbling and carping about my current WiP: I’m nearly finished. Last night, I sat down and tried to work on the penultimate chapter. I didn’t have much success, but that’s okay. The morning was productive, and this chapter will come–I may start in on it after […]

New Year Noodling

First post of the new year, and I’m in rather familiar territory: not knowing what to write! So, we’ll ramble. -We did not watch the ball drop–it’s just not the same without Dick Clark (though the last time I saw Dick Clark, that wasn’t the same, either). We did do a countdown, complete with New […]

Post-Christmas Post

Christmas falling on a Friday may be the best thing, ever. My organization gets both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as holidays, leading to an automatic four-day weekend (although, as my boss insists on pointing out every time a holiday comes up, we don’t actually have to take the holidays on the day they occur […]

Tuesday Take Two: The Mind of a Writer

Because I’m feeling better (though I’m still not sure I could say that I’m feeling well), and because I actually somewhat slept last night, and because I feel kind of bad about yet another post with a title like yesterday’s, I figured I’d try this again. A week ago, I had one of those great […]

Blah

It’s 4:30 as I write this. I’ve been up since four, awake since three, dealing with a cold that should have been kicked from my system by now, a cold I’ve been dealing with for a week and a day. This is shaping up to be a day where Things Don’t Get Done. Including a […]

Information Age?

I thought this was supposed to be the Information Age. Last week, I was given what should have been a relatively simple task: find the names of the managers of about forty stores in the county so that we could send a letter about changes in the great state of New York’s recycling laws. A […]

The Big Fear (About Writing, that is)

On the first Wednesday of each month, many writer-bloggers participate in the “Insecure Writer’s Support Group,” an opportunity to share insecurities and fears with sympathetic souls and offer encouragement to others. I learned about this great idea early in my blogging life, but declined to participate. Not because I don’t have insecurities, but because I […]

Recovering

Where am I? Who am I? It was a great weekend, don’t get me wrong, but it ended as it began on Tuesday (though that wasn’t the beginning of my weekend; I had to work on Wednesday), with ten hours of driving to collect two little birds from two different college campuses. The good thing […]