Autumn arrived at 4:02 PM today, and I’m kicking this website into high gear. Please read on. GUIDELINES FOR GUEST BLOGGERS If you’re a published author with thoughts to share about your creative process or the ways you’ve found to break through the blocks that keep you from writing, I invite you to contribute to… [Read More]
Emily Hanlon’s Ten New Year’s Resolutions for the Fiction Writer
Emily Hanlon posted these New Year’s resolutions for fiction writers, and she’s given me permission to reprint them here. I first encountered Emily through the International Women’s Writing Guild years ago, when they were holding their annual summer conferences at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. I gained a lot from her five-day workshop,… [Read More]
Slump-A-Dump: Rapping my way through a creative block
Writing as everyday spiritual practice was the topic of one of my recent blog posts, but writing mindfully and staying in the present moment is a lot more difficult than it might seem. Since I’ve been feeling creatively blocked lately, I decided to follow my own advice, switch genres and write a poem about my… [Read More]
Writing as Everyday Spiritual Practice
Can writing be an everyday spiritual practice? It all depends on how you approach it. Scott W. Alexander defines everyday spiritual practice as “any activity or attitude in which you can regularly and intentionally engage, and which significantly deepens the quality of your relationship with the miracle of life both within and beyond you.” Scott’s… [Read More]
Writing workshops – are they worth it?
Several women writers I know are off to a three-day writing workshop at a local retreat center, and I admit I’m jealous. Expense was a factor. Still, I could have gone, but I don’t write well in groups, and I’m resistive to the idea of following the directions of other writers, so I took a… [Read More]
Five reasons I’d rather write than paint
A new gallery, the River Front Art Coop, is opening in downtown Troy, and I’m schlepping some of my work down there this afternoon with a view to showing it on consignment even though when it comes to the visual arts, I’m feeling pretty rusty. I did the cover illustrations for both my mystery novels,… [Read More]