During the remaining days and weeks of pretty weather, I want to challenge everyone to take time to truly see what is around them–and to jot your observations in a journal of some kind. It might be a spiral notebooks–or a simple piece of paper. Rule: You must write your observation while you are outside–actually…
Category: Daily Writing Habit
Writing Morning Pages – How They Work & Why – The Zen Master Advises to Empty Your Cup
In her book The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron tells would-be creators to write Morning Pages every day, 1. She does not suggest that participants write creatively as part of their Morning Pages. 2. She wants participants to simply write, write, write–to write whatever comes into their minds. The Morning Pages are a Way to Empty…
How to Create a Garden Journal – More about the Nature Writer Dorothy Wordsworth’s Nature Writing
If you are wondering how to create a garden journal, the most obvious answer is: Write. As usual, however, obvious answers are hardly ever true answers. Many times, they are insults thrust toward what a true answer might be, and while I often tell journalists and writers to do just that — just write! Nature…
6 Words: Memoir Challenge – Exercise 2 – Write to Beat Writer’s Block
Ok. Yesterday, you should have listed 6 concrete words that signify yourself in some way. Today, we have a short writing exercise. 6 Words: Memoir Challenge – Exercise 2: For each of the 6 words that you listed, write one simple paragraph to express the way the word is significant to you. Write is an…
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…
How to Participate in #ReadtoWrite for a Chance to Win an Autographed Copy of Jacki Kellum’s The Donkey’s Song in 31 Days
Today is January 1, and I am launching several challenges and events for writers and visual artists. Participate in any or all of the challenge events for a chance to win an autographed copy of my picture book The Donkey’s Song at the end of January–in 31 Days. In February, I’ll add other challenges–#14DayPBChallenge and…
Read to Write – A Challenge for 2023
This time of year, I always reflect on what I do and do not want to do in the coming year, and then I name my goals and resolutions for the New Year. Perhaps more than any other year before this one, I plan to Reach for the Stars in 2023. You see, in 2022,…
The Cocoon Harvest – by William Hamilton Gibson
The Cocoon Harvest December 29 [From Gibson’s Sharp Eyes: A Ramblers Calendar of Fifty-Two Weeks Among Insects, Birds and Flowers – Originally Published in 1898 and illustrated by William Hamilton Gibson Author and Illustrator.] NOW is the time to lay up your store of cocoons, looking to those beautiful moths of next: June; and there…
Sharp Eyes – A Rambler’s Calendar: 52 Weeks Among Insects, Birds, and Flowers – William Hamilton Gibson – 1898
Don’t Just Look — See! April 7 – Quickening Seeds and Seedlings
How to Annotate & Highlight a Book and Why?
October is going to be an amazing month for me. Alluding to Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting, October of 2022 is at the tip-top of the Ferris Wheel of My Life. On October 18, 2022, my debut picture book The Donkey’s Song will be released to bookstores everywhere. I am teaching writing in college, and I’m about to begin a…