Tag Archives: writer
I blame Charlton Heston. When I was a little kid, the yearly screening of The Ten Commandments was anticipated in our household for a number of reasons. The first of which was its role as a rite of passage to, if not adulthood, at least big kid status, proved through the ability to stay awake through the entire thing. Alas, for many years, my brothers and I would consistently conk out on the living room floor somewhere around Yul Brynner’s…..
Newsflash: everyone has writer’s block, not just authors whose livelihood depends on their capacity to churn out amazing poetry or prose. If you’ve ever written a memo, created a proposal, drafted a lesson plan or used the written word to communicate, then you’ve experienced writer’s block. I’m not sure what causes the syllabic logjam preventing thoughts from traveling from the brain through the fingers onto the page (or computer screen), but I have learned how to break it up. When…..
This photo is from a trip I took to Portland in August 2019. The hand is that of my youngest daughter. She and I were out on a walk, exploring her neighborhood. I thought that today, we could use it as a writing prompt. One of my tricks for breaking through writer’s block is to imagine different worlds within the various pictures I see streaming by in my Instagram timeline. It helps me to shift gears when I’m stuck in…..
My mom died on January 27, 2020. Grief is a strange experience. Grief is also NOT linear. Even though she has been gone for three years, there are still memories of her that appear at random times, popping to the top of my consciousness like errant butterflies flitting across a garden full of flowers waving in the breeze. That’s her in the picture—the brunette nestled next to her dad. She was the elder of two “oops babies” that arrived when…..
Writer’s block can be frustrating when you’re facing a blank screen. As the cursor blinks in anticipation of your forthcoming syllables, it can seem a bit accusatory, if not contemptuous. What would you say if I told you there’s a way to write without writing? A life hack that I recommend to busy clients when encouraging them to increase their blogging activity is that they use dictation applications instead of writing. People traditionally speak faster than they type. It’s also…..
Today is writer Virginia Woolf”s birthday. Born in Kensington (a London residential district) 140 years ago, her writing remains as relevant today as it was when she first committed her thoughts to paper. This quote of hers in particular resonates with me as a writer: “If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.” ― Virginia Woolf Writers are observers, and while some writing can be classified as nonfiction, all writing that has…..
What kind of cook are you? The “measure-y, by the book” sort or the stir, sniff and sample sort? For what it’s worth, I think that not only does each approach have merit, but there are certain times when it pays to err on the side of the extreme of either. When I was a little girl, I used to perch on a stool in my grandma’s kitchen and watch as she cooked dinner for us. My knees drawn up…..
The picture above is of me at approximately 29 years old. Two of my daughters are with me outside the daily newspaper where I worked—my oldest daughter is probably inside the building, chatting up the reporters in the newsroom. My youngest daughter recently posted it on her Instagram (she’s the baby in the picture). She is currently 29; her older sisters 30 and 34, respectively. What follows is a bit of introspection and work-in-progress exposition for my next book. I…..
One of the best features of Twitter is the opportunity to connect with other people around a specific topic via online chats using a hashtag to “sort” the conversation stream apart from the rest of the flow of general tweets. These interactions expand my horizons, introduce me to other minds and concepts and also give me an opportunity to refine my thoughts about any given topic. Today’s post is about blogging, but more specifically, what inspires us to write. There…..
Every day, I log at least five miles of walking. In addition to helping with stress relief, I also mentally compose a lot of posts in my head during my daily constitutional. From this, as I sat down to peck out today’s post, two ideas kept filtering to the top of my consciousness: “To thine own self be true.” — Wm. Shakespeare from Hamlet and “I wanna tell you a little secret; being ‘The One’ is just like being in…..