Category Archives: Writing
Plant Success
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
Whenever I need a boost, I reread Write Smart, Write Happy by award-winning author Cheryl St. John. Here’s an uplifting excerpt:
More than once I’ve heard the mind compared to land or soil. Land is lying there, available. If you have a yard or a garden, you know this. A farmer knows it, up close and personal. Land doesn’t have an opinion about what becomes of it; it’s ready for anything. If no one ever plows or plants seeds or fertilizes, the land will produce only weeds. Maybe a stray wildflower or tree seed will happen by, and if the weather permits and there is adequate rain and sun, those seeds will grow into plants. Anything that grows is by happenstance.
But a farmer can plow and prepare the soil and plant any crop he wishes—anything from corn to deadly nightshade. Land doesn’t care. It will produce whatever is planted. But land always returns what is planted.
The same is true for our minds. We can let our minds fall idle to whatever happens to fall in and take root. Or we can create goals, prepare our thoughts, and plant success. Our minds don’t care what we plant, but whatever we plant is what will grow and be returned to us.
Source: Write Smart, Write Happy by Cheryl St. John, p. 256
Inspiration from Louise Penny
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
Last month, New York Times best-selling author Louise Penny received an honorary degree from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. Here’s the powerful speech she delivered to the Class of 2024:
My favorite quotations:
“Hope is a revolutionary act, and civility is terrifying to those who would divide us.”
“I am also very grateful to have looked into the void. No gap: no miracles, no joy, no books, no Dr. Penny.”
On Dreaming and Writing
Last Thursday, I participated in a WFWA (Women’s Fiction Writers Association) webinar with writer, educator, and certified dreamwork professional Tzivia Gover. She is the author of Dreaming on the Page: Tap into Your Midnight Mind to Supercharge Your Writing, The Mindful Way to a Good Night’s Sleep, and Joy in Every Moment.
Tzivia began by reminding us that we are all storytelling beings who dream several times each night, whether we remember the dreams or not. Many of those dreams are filled with vivid imagery and strong emotions that can provide a gold mine of metaphors, memorable characters, plot twists, and out-of-body experiences. By tapping into these dreams, we can unlock a wealth of creative material that is unique to our own subconscious, empowering us to transform our writing in ways we never thought possible.
Remember Your First Love
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
Whenever I need a boost, I reread Write Smart, Write Happy by award-winning author Cheryl St. John. Here’s an uplifting excerpt:
Sometimes a book is merely a job. Sometimes a book is not enjoyable to write. But we love being writers, or we wouldn’t do this. We love having written something that will touch and inspire others. We love the magic of stories and creating worlds and people we can manipulate to draw emotions from our audience. We love being writers.
Sometimes it’s an effort, but we must remember our first love; we must transport ourselves back to those days when we first knew we had to put those people in our heads on paper and create stories for them. Whenever I’ve been discouraged or questioned my choices, I’ve always asked myself the same question: What would I rather be doing?
Even before I was published, I was frustrated and wondered if I should keep pursuing this dream of being a writer. I sometimes wished I could be content to do something else, something with a quicker payoff and a visible reward for the effort. But in my heart of hearts, I knew I would not be satisfied until I’d given writing my very best and written stories that touched readers the way so many books have touched me.
So, if you believe you’ve lost your love of writing or have become discouraged, ask yourself, What would I rather be doing? If there’s something else that fills that place in you, by all means do that thing. If not, remember your first love. Find the joy, the awe, and the inspiration and discipline to move forward.
Source: Write Smart, Write Happy by Cheryl St. John, p. 78
Make Art That Tells the Truth
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
Writer Julie Duffy shared the following thought-provoking advice in a recent post on the Writer Unboxed blog:
It’s hard to take our eyes off the endless news coverage, but the world needs us to peel ourselves away from the outrage machine, and instead make art that tells the truth.
Fiction doesn’t have to preach a political message.
But even if you’re writing about fairies or aliens, fiction cannot help being political because everything you write reflects your values and mirrors your experiences.
Don’t be afraid of that.
And don’t think your writing doesn’t matter, because there are “more important issues right now.”
There is no more important issue that opening someone’s heart to subtlety, to nuance, to the fact that every human being contains multitudes and that it is possible to hold two opposing ideas inside you at the same time.
The Hamas attack on Israel was horrifying and the death toll and famine in Gaza is horrifying.
Two very old men are running to for a second term as President in the US and we have to elect one of them because that’s how the system works.
Some young women love Taylor Swift and have discovered that being part of the fandom for a football team is fun.
As a writer you help people to turn away from the shrieking “this or that” of social media and welcoming them into the complex world of fiction that deals with all the parts of being a human in community with other humans.
It is important work.
It is healing work.
On Being Aware
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
Author Liz Michalski shared the following thought-provoking advice in a recent post on the Writer Unboxed blog:
As writers, we spend so much time in our heads, creating imaginary worlds and populating them with imaginary people, that sometimes we can miss the world we are a part of. Walking, we can be so immersed in telling ourselves the story we’re trying to write that we miss what the clouds are writing in the sky over our head. Driving, we hammer out plot holes and fail to see the scenery arcing past our windows. And it’s not just writing that carries us away. Worry and impatience for things to ‘begin’ (or for tea to boil) keep us from living – and noticing – what is happening now. The world becomes background noise to what is in our head.
But I’d argue that being aware of the details of life as we live them is important for us both as people, which of course is what matters the most, but also as writers. It’s these details, captured, that help us immerse readers in our stories, that bind them to us with that best magic – truth in our fiction. To capture the whispering sound of snow on the wind, the sharp green scent of pine needles crushed underfoot, the heavy, warm weight of a sleeping toddler in our arms, to trap them on the page and make them come alive, it helps if we have captured them in our memories first. And that can only happen if we allow ourselves to be aware of them as they happen.
So my challenge today to you, my dear friends, is to take a moment to settle into this complex world we live in, to slow down and look at it with open eyes, as if for the first time. What are you seeing or hearing or tasting or touching that on another day you might not have noticed?
Write Your Way Whole
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
In a recent post on Writers Unboxed, author and coach Kathleen McCleary shared excellent advice for dealing with writer’s block. Here’s an excerpt from that post:
Charles Dickens started writing an autobiography when he was 33 and already famous for writing Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol. He found writing truthfully about the dark years of his childhood to be so painful that he abandoned his autobiography and instead, at 37, started writing David Copperfield. In it he explored all the memories that were too much to process in reality: working in a factory as a child while his father was in prison, attending school with a sadistic headmaster, his relationship with his wife. It was his favorite of all his books.
Nora Ephron wrote her first novel, Heartburn, after discovering that her husband was cheating on her while she was pregnant with their second child. The main character at one point says she tells stories “Because if I tell the story, I control the version. Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story, it doesn’t hurt as much. Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.”
So, what are some ways to write yourself whole? You know better than I do, but here are a few ways to get started:
◆ Write the childhood you wish you’d had.
◆ Write the thing you wish you’d said.
◆ Write the ending you wanted or want for your marriage, career, friendship, life.
◆ Write who you’d be if you’d chosen to take that flight to San Francisco for a job instead of staying in D.C., or whatever that pivotal life decision was.
◆ Write who you’d be if you’d said “yes” instead of “no.”
◆ Write the Band-aid for the hole in your heart and psyche that haunt you.
◆ Write your secret. Write your deepest longing. Write your starkest truth.
◆ Write in a different voice than you’ve ever written before.
Do this not in journals or memoir but in fiction, in telling stories that give you the distance to have a better understanding of and more compassion for the person experiencing those things, making those choices, failing and flailing.
The English critic G. K. Chesterton wrote about his experience of reading David Copperfield, “[Dickens] has created creatures who cling to us and tyrannize over us, creatures whom we would not forget if we could, creatures whom we could not forget if we would, creatures who are more actual than the man who made them.” In other words, creatures who are whole, who restore us, the readers to wholeness, as well as the author who created them. I’d say that’s a pretty fine thing to do.
The Sum of This Year
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
In A Year of Writing Dangerously, author and teacher Barbara Abercrombie shares anecdotes, insights, and solutions. She ends the book with the following advice:
You have some stories or essays now, or your first draft in some stage of completion. Or maybe you have a pile of scribbled pages or notebooks, or a computer full of notes.
Give yourself credit for anything you’ve written this year. Turn on your sweetheart voice, and let it tell you how brave you’ve been to write anything at all.
And then figure out what you’re going to do with your manuscript or notes.
Don’t give yourself the excuse of feeling overwhelmed. You’ve come this far; now get on with it.
Source: A Year of Writing Dangerously
The Best Situation
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
On Fridays, I receive Hope Clark’s newsletter, Funds for Writers. Here’s a thought-provoking essay from a recent email:
Out there, in some land, at some time there is the perfect situation for writing. We may not have it where we are. We may wonder if it’s who we are, not being the right person at the right time.
On social media, I see people sending pictures of the perfect sunset on Edisto Beach, the cutest, most perfect antics of a pet, the greatest evening of a perfect dinner with a friend. Total sigh moments.
What we don’t see is that perfect sunset on Edisto Beach was the photographer’s fourth night at the beach, and served as their best picture from a hundred and ten others.
What we don’t see is the fifty attempts at getting that sometimes annoying, sometimes sweet pet doing the right trick at just the right time.
What we don’t see is the squabbles between friends and the make-up evening with this friend at dinner, and the dozen adjustments of food, lighting, and plate to set up the setting.
The odds of finding a perfect moment the first time are small indeed. What we don’t see are the modifications, disenchantments, and frustrations of arriving at that perfect moment. Without those, without enduring the innumerable setups, test-runs, and false starts, we don’t find the perfect moment.
Sometimes we just keep on keeping on in hopes the perfect moment runs into us. That’s more the situation than not.
Success is about putting yourself in the situations that aren’t perfect to find one that is. It’s why we write, and write, and submit, and weather rejections. One day may come the acceptance and all the perks that come with it, but without weathering the imperfect moments, without seeking the perfection, we never have a chance.
