It’s sunny and warm in Portland, and there’s no better place on earth when such is the case. (People visit here in spring or summer, fall in love and move. Then the fall and winter rains set in. Rah roh.) This year, more than any I can remember recently, I’m feeling very spring-y. Maybe it […]
Right now I’m supposed to be writing. I have some time cleared away for a session attending to my rewrite. But I’m not writing. I’m doing social media. (VERY important.) I’m making a list of all the things I want to accomplish in the next four months. (Before I leave for my next France workshop.)Emailing […]
I’m a big picture thinker. This is helpful when writing a novel, in which you need to keep an entire story arc in your mind. And it is great when you are planning your weekly schedule. But it can be overwhelming when you are trying to get words on the page. I start out writing […]
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about how, really, the only writing ritual that works is opening the file and starting to write. There’s no magic mug to drink from, or a systematic routine that will all of a sudden have you flinging words at the page. You just have to do […]
I am not big on preparation. I am more of a jump-right-into-whatever-I’m-doing kind of gal. I never read instructional manuals, instead preferring to just start pushing buttons and see what happens. I glance at recipes and often halfway through realize I’m missing crucial ingredients. And, much to the consternation of my husband, I rarely follow […]
I was meditating this morning. My legs twitched. I was antsy in my seat. My eyebrow itched and finally I succumbed and scratched it. My back tingled. All these things took my attention away from my mantra–Hum Sah. And then I started thinking about emails I needed to write and work I had to complete. […]
Routine. Since returning home from France a week and a half ago, I’ve struggled with establishing a writing routine. In France, I followed the same routine as I have here at home for many years: wake up, get coffee, sit down to the computer and write. Okay, I will admit to looking at email while […]
Many moons ago, I used to offer a ton of writing prompts. I wrote a tumblr blog called Inventive Writing Prompts (nobody ever said I was good at names, oh and I just checked and it is long gone). I’ve written a writing prompts book (please go look at it because nobody else ever does). […]
First of all, Happy Easter! And if you are not into that holiday, then you can always celebrate the coming of spring. As a kid growing up in the Unitarian church, that was the emphasis we learned. As you read this newsletter, I’ll be settling into an apartment in Lyon, France for two days, my […]
A friend wrote from Mexico last week. She said she was having a hard time letting go of the words she was writing. There were sentences she liked in her essay and she didn’t want to delete them. She suggested this might be something I’d like to write about. And she was right. Letting go […]
