PODCAST-WHEN TO CARE AND WHEN NOT TO Photo Courtesy of Omar Salom 0:00 / 0:00 When to Care and When Not To (This essay originally appeared in Brevity.) My vocation is writing, but my avocation is painting, mostly portraits. I belong to a Facebook group dedicated to showing the work of artists who are trying to […]
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UNSTICKING A STUCK STORY 0:00 / 0:00 Unsticking a Stuck Story An idea for a great character drops into your mind. Then, you compose what you believe to be a magnificent first sentence, “Two hours before Simon’s life took a nightmarish turn for the worse, he stood in his grimy bathroom, under the dim light
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THE CELESTIAL VAULT Photo Courtesy of Unsplash Years ago, I read a book that animated and forever changed my creative process. In The Mind of the Maker, Dorothy Sayers says, “It is a universal experience that a work of art has no existence apart from its translation into material form.” That is, people think a
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THE WRITER’S STORY PODCAST ON MAINTAINING CRITIQUE GROUPS Would you like to hear a discussion about writing communities and critique groups? How to form a group? How to organize meetings? Ways to think about group dynamics? Meredith Cole and Kristin Swenson invited me to participate in the podcast discussing the topic. I join the discussion
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INHABITING YOUR CHARACTER:PONINT OF VIEW Streetlight Magazine just published my article on point of view. You can read it below. Have you ever used virtual reality goggles to watch a movie? Imagine that the film starts off in an African village. Ahead of you, you see a hut and can almost smell the smoke rising
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THE EFFECT OF FORGIVENESS ON CREATIVITY A good sunset puts the world into perspective. This essay originally appeared in Streetlight Magazine. I’ve kept an idea journal for as long as I can remember. Whenever a word, sentence or story idea strikes my fancy, I jot it down and date the entry. One day, I
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ALL ABOUT THAT BASSWRITING TIP Have you heard Meghan Trainor’s song All About That Bass? Catchy lyrics, great beat, terrific message. I know this song is about body image, but you can also extrapolate a couple of writing tips, such as: 1. Perfectionism is the enemy of creativity. If you try to sit down and instantly
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THE MONKEY AND THE BANANAA LESSON IN PROBLEM SOLVING A few years back, I read a study about monkeys and baskets. I don’t remember the names of the researchers or where they worked, but here’s the gist of what happened. They split monkeys into two groups then taught all of the monkeys how to open
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HOW TO CREATE LIVELY CHARACTERSWRITING TIP Photo Courtesy of Bob Dass I take improv classes at The Big Blue Door. Recently, we learned a game called, Present, Past, Future. The exercise gave me wonderful insight in how to create characters who hop off of the page. Here’s how it’s played. One person starts a scene
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TELLING A STORY CAN HELP YOU WRITE A STORY A few years ago, I found myself in the middle of a writing slump. All the short stories I sent out came back with a five-word rejection: Not Right For Our List. For a writer, those five words have the same effect as someone saying: “Are
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