My granddaughter, the lovely Olivia, who at 14 months is learning to walk quite efficiently, is here today and so no deep thoughts on writing. While she naps, I'm compiling this post of things I'm currently loving (with thanks to Beverly for the inspiration). 1. Suddenly, I'm all about writing practice. I'm working on a […]
Please welcome guest poster Julie Duffy today. Julie and I connected on Twitter and I'm glad we did! She is a writer and also the creator of A Story A Day–the extreme challenge to write a story every day in May. (And guess what–you can start any time. If you get going now, think how […]
Yeah, sometimes I have a one-track mind. Last week I wrote about some slightly different regular writing practices (beyond the usual round-ups of meditating and all the other things we try to do regularly and fail at). And now here I am again, with the word practice in the title of the post. At […]
My church is currently featuring a series on foundational spiritual practices and as I listened to our minister a couple of Sundays ago, I started thinking (as always) about writing. What, I wondered, would I consider to be foundational writing practices? I pondered and made notes on this for a few days and this blog […]
This stone clearly has no momentum. I’m in LA, visiting a friend. I’m distracted by good food to eat, events to attend (yesterday a book signing for a fabulous cookbook and a Native American Thanksgiving ritual). And yet I’m writing every morning. I’m a rolling stone, merrily cavorting down the long hill of novel […]
Over the last week, I've been revisiting the writer's process. (You can get caught up on the other posts here and here.) As promised, today's post begins a look at each step of the process. And so today we talk about the fine and wonderful art of glumping. Glumping is a word that I've always […]
Do you ever get certain phrases ringing in your head? My latest is, "bringing full attention to bear." As in full attention to my creative work, though it could be applied to just about anything. It was brought on by reading an article written by Christine Kane, in which she talked about how important it […]
This is going to be a short post today (I know what you're thinking–ha! when has she ever managed to write a short post?) because, ta-da, my office furniture is assembled (thanks to my long-suffering husband) and I want to spend time moving myself back in. This is actually the very first post I've written […]
The other day, I was out walking in a neighborhood next to mine. And for some reason, I started thinking about the name of the neighborhood that I live in, which is Rose City Park. And the thought occurred to me that it is a lovely, evocative name. This is something I've always known, but […]
It is 3 PM on a glorious spring day in Portland. My cat's in the window making that weird clicking-in-the-back-of-the-throat sound that kitties make when they see birds or squirrels. It's spring break, so every normal human is outside enjoying themselves. Except me. I'm sitting at my desk, near where Captain is making odd cat […]
