WITH VALENTINE’S DAY fast approaching, it seems like a good time to talk about the art of writing a love letter — an art that is in danger of becoming extinct, as is all letter writing, lost to the new communication norms of texting and email and social media messaging. […]
AT ITS CORE, writing is about finding meaning in the mundane. That’s why some of the most satisfying and universal personal essays and stories spring out of completely ordinary events. You don’t have to have climbed Mount Everest or overcome a deadly disease to have something interesting to write about. […]
WRITING PROMPTS ARE UBIQUITOUS. If you want writing prompts, you can subscribe to any number of writing sites that offer hundreds of prompts delivered to your email box, daily or weekly. Or you can buy books of writing prompts — a quick search on Amazon using “writing prompts” returns over […]
FREEDOM! In the U.S., we say we are “the land of the free.” The lyrics of our songs, extoll the virtues and necessity of freedom: Let freedom ring. Sing your freedom, because there’s nothing in the world like freedom, freedom of speech / freedom to say / freedom to think / […]
What are the core values that shape your work? I pose this question today as a multi-purpose writing prompt that can help you more fully understand the underlying beliefs that sustain your worldview and drive your life’s work. Why “multi-purpose”? I’ll get to that in a moment. First, let’s use […]
AROUND THE WORLD, December is a month full of holidays. Whether you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah, the Solstice, Rohatsu, Mawlid el-Nabi, Kwanzaa, or another holiday I have not named, you most likely follow rituals and traditions handed down to you by your ancestors or religion. Perhaps you have created traditions […]
A good writer can conjure a landscape and its peoples to live inside you, and the best writers make you feel they’ve disclosed their soft underbellies. — Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir WHEN YOU READ A MEMOIR, what about that author’s story evokes emotion in you? What makes the […]
I FOUND MYSELF EMBROILED in a bloggers dilemma as I sat down to write this week’s post. Sunday is Valentine’s day — I should write a post about love and about writing about love. On the other hand, Monday is the Presidents’ Day holiday. I should gather great quotes from our presidents […]
EVERY DAY, I wake thankful for all that I have and the life I am fortunate enough to lead. Though I am not wealthy by U.S. standards, compared to the vast majority of people in this world, I am rich beyond imagining. I live in a relatively spacious, well-roofed home that […]
WHENEVER I mention to my writer friends that I enjoy reading both electronic and paper books and, moreover, that I find myself turning more frequently to my e-reader, they inevitably wrinkle their noses and — with the tone of an upper-crust British aristocrat speaking to a country peasant — say, “Oh, […]
