creativity


7 Signs of Creative Burnout and What to Do About It

Guest Post by Ainsley Lawrence YOU’VE GOT MULTIPLE PROJECTS, a full personal life, and hardly any energy or enthusiasm to tackle either. Sound familiar? When you have so much going on in your life but feel like you have nothing to give, you may be stretching yourself too thin. And […]


If You Had Asked Me – A Retrospective

A YEAR AGO last month, I was celebrating the loss of 30 unwanted pounds and embarking on a bicycle tour of the Coeur d’Alene trail in Idaho. My heart was filled with gratitude, the world was wide open, and anything — truly, anything! — seemed possible. During the tour, my […]


Rendered Speechless 7

THERE’S MORE THAN ONE WAY to escape a pandemic. You can shelter in place, go nowhere, see no one, exercise indoors. You can catch up on home-improvement projects, learn how to cook, start painting, read that pile of books that’s been gathering dust on your nightstand. You can finally write […]


7 Innovative Journaling Techniques You’ll Want to Try 5

DO YOU FEEL bored or stuck in your journaling practice, or have you had a difficult time starting or being consistent with your writing? Using the same technique every day, whether it’s morning pages or free-writing or writing prompts, can lead to writing that feels repetitive and shallow. Journaling can […]


Your Best Writing Year Yet! Dealing With Energy Thieves 3

JUST AS WE EACH have a limited amount of physical strength, we each have a limited store of energy each day. There’s only so much energy for focus, motivation, and self-control. Only so much energy for creative activities such as writing. Have you noticed that sometimes you feel a high […]


Calling on Your Inner Muse 1

INSPIRATION. Creativity. Ideas. They’re coming fast and furious; you can hardly keep up. Your muse is whispering in your ear, and you are in love. With writing. With creating. With life. Sound familiar? It should, as it’s the mythology of creativity we’ve all grown up knowing about: an image of […]


Between Writing Projects: 4 Ways to Get Writing Again 10

Having just released two books in six months — the first, a collection of women’s stories and poems about the ’60s and ’70s, and the second a memoir that took seven years to write — I felt lost, empty, and spent. I would sit at the computer with the intention of writing, only […]


Poetry as Memoir Form 22

Memoir comes in many forms, including poetry. Sometimes I forget this fact. To demonstrate how poetry can be memoir, I want to share with you a simple little poem I made in response to a writing prompt, along with the journaling process I used to write it. My journal is […]


Journaling Tips: Write Different-ly 4

In a rut with your journal writing, basically saying the same things over and over? Want to be more creative? Consider the following tips to Write Different-ly: Upside down In pencil Lying on the floor In bed Out of bed In the garden At the Library With crayons, or pastels […]