Despite no rain in the forecast for two days, it feels like time to settle in today and do some solid writing. (But yes, I’ll take “walk breaks” today.) I’ve received a few questions about the cottage I’m staying in for three weeks. This is my third time here, and it feels like home. Here’s a […]
creativity
England: Day 2, May 10, 2023
I took three walks today, just to get reacquainted with the village and buy food. (England has the BEST gluten-free bread!) Photos today include a few historic buildings in the village plus the surrounding hills, limestone crags, fields with new lambs, drystone walls zigzagging uphill, and everything so GREEN! Everywhere you turn, something is blooming […]
Your Unique Writing Gift
If you lack confidence in your writing ability… If you doubt that you have anything unique to say to a reader… If you think it doesn’t matter if you share your writing with the world, you’ll want to read this. Your Writing is Unique Last week when in Waco, TX, I visited the beautiful Homestead […]
A Writer’s Perfect Week
It has been a writer’s perfect week. I wish I had a word for it! A perfect storm (of which I’ve experienced many over the years) is a “particularly bad state of affairs, arising from a number of negative factors,” according to the dictionary. But this week was the opposite: a writer’s perfect week. While […]
Conversations Crucial for Creative Success
Research indicates that the average person has about 50,000 conversations with himself a day. (I bet writers do it even more!) Most of that ruminating is about yourself, and according to the psychological researchers, the inner self-talk is 80% negative. While much of the negativity comes from criticizing ourselves (I don’t like my new jeans… […]
Creative Composting for Writers
When I started writing, I lived on an Iowa farm, in a county known nationwide as the “black dirt capital of the world.” Record crops were grown there, in the most nutrient-dense soil in the country. Then I moved to Texas twelve years ago. I tried for years to grow something–anything–in my front yard. I […]
Germination Phase
[Read about the first phase here: preparing to write.] The second stage, called the germination stage by Louise De Salvo Ph.D. in Writing as a Way of Healing, is a time “during which we gather and work on fragments of ideas, images, phrases, scenes, moments, lines, possibilities for plots, characters, settings. Sometimes we don’t quite […]
Key #3: Loosen Up
This Key-3 step is designed to help you get fully involved with your writing. [See the previous three blog posts for the introduction to flow and the first two keys.] Writing in Flow author Susan Perry says, “To allow your creativity, your insights, your inner stories, to spill over onto the page, you’ll need to […]
Writing in Flow to Make Writing Fun
One of my writing goals for 2015 is learning how to recapture the “fun” of writing. I love having a writing career and being published, but sometimes I long for the days when it was more enjoyable to write. I remember the days of getting into my fiction simply because I loved the character and I […]
Making Creativity "Work"
It’s good to be back to the blog! It’s been a wonderful “learning time” during the three-month sabbatical. I won’t repeat what most of you received in my August newsletter. [Sign-up to the right.] Instead, today I want to talk about the nuts and bolts of creativity. Specifically, a writer’s creativity. Creativity is a mysterious […]