6 Words: Memoir Challenge – Exercise 1 – Beat Writer’s Block

For many years, autumn has been the time of year that I do most of my writing, and during the month of October, I am hosting a Memoir Writing Challenge: Harvest Your Past.  I have decided to throw in an extra memoir-writing challenge before October, to help you prime your writing pump. Bottom Line: The…

January 2 – Day 2 of #ReadtoWrite

Daily Painting by Carol Marine pgs. 1 – 73 The Spider Weaver by Margaret Musgrove Calabash Cat by James Rumford Kente Cloth Patterns Sheep – A Chapter in Story of the Bible Animals by J.G. Wood pgs. 176-193. Create to Be More Creative – A Zen-Like Thought about the Importance of Getting Things Out Read…

Emotional Bankruptcy Caused by Alienation from Nature

In Women Who Run With the Wolves, Estes associates Nature with the Wild Woman Self. She describes her childhood, during which she grew up and into nature. “ I was raised up near the Michigan state line, surrounded by woodlands, orchards, and farmland and near the Great Lakes. There, thunder and lightning were my main nutrition….

Tillie Olsen and Silences: Writer’s Block

Tillie Olsen wrote Silences which describes the periods during which the creator becomes incapable of creating. For a painter, it is a time of blank, white canvases. Writers might call this Writer’s Block. In my case, the silences that Olsen describes are normally caused by depression or by becoming too busy to hear myself think…

14-Day Picture Book Challenge Day 2 – Write a PB First Draft in A Stream of Consciousness – What is Writing in a Stream of Conciousness?

Write in Stream of Consciousness to Hush Your Self-Editor Something about writing seems to intimidate and/or frighten many people. Writing in a Stream of Consciousness can help get you past that hurdle of fear of writing. What Is Stream of Consciousness Writing? a person’s thoughts and conscious reactions to events, perceived as a continuous flow….

Fear Is the Artist’s Worst Enemy – It Causes Writer’s Block

Fear is the worst thing that can happen to anyone who hopes to create. Fear prevents the painter from painting, and it forces the writer to edit himself literally to death.  Barbara de Angelis wrote an excellent treatise on Fear: [image credit Amazon] “Imagine that you had a person in your life who followed you…

Write First, Edit Later – Don’t Write & Edit at the Same Time

I have talked to a number of people about what they are calling Writer’s Block, but in talking about writer’s block, I believe that many are confusing writer’s block with editor’s block. In my opinion, one of the best ways to become a writer who is blocked is to insist upon editing as you write….

There’s A Time to Write & A Time to Edit — Don’t Mix the Two

Writer’s Block Is Probably Editor’s Block I have talked to a number of people about what they are calling writer’s block, but I believe that many people confuse writing with editing. In fact, I believe that what many people call writer’s block is actually editor’s block. One of my best pieces of advice for writing…