A RECENT New York Times article on language and gender caught my attention, because its first sentence, which I paraphrase here, immediately rang true: Americans are resistant to use the word “she” when describing a hypothetical president. Not because Americans don’t believe a woman could be president, but because our […]
YOU ARE WISE. Your inner being, soul, Self, intuition, psyche — whatever you want to call it — knows more than you realize. And journaling can be an effective way of tapping into this inner wisdom. But how does it work? Carl Jung is famous for having given us many of […]
“Quiet the mind, and the soul will speak.” ~Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati WHEN YOU SIT DOWN TO WRITE, do you struggle with lack of focus and creativity? Are you easily distracted by external stimuli? Have trouble clearly envisioning that scene you are trying to write? If so, you’re not alone. […]
STRESS is an emotional, mental, and/or physical response to pressure. That pressure may be internally generated, such as when we place high expectations on ourselves and fail to live up to those expectations. Or it may come from external circumstances, such as a demanding job, ill health, or any situation […]
YOU’VE FINISHED the first draft of your book, and you feel great — for about five minutes. You know your next step is to revise, but the task seems overwhelming. You’ve spent months, maybe years, writing those chapters, those pages, those carefully crafted scenes. And you’re supposed to . . […]
SO YOU STARTED THE YEAR OUT STRONG. You created your big rock goals, developed an action plan for accomplishing those goals and scheduled time on your calendar. You review your plan frequently to keep yourself motivated. Sure, you’re not perfect, but you’re making progress, and that’s what counts. In fact, […]
I’M PROUD AND PLEASED to be able to share with you my recent interview with Linda Joy Myers, in which we discuss her new memoir, Song of the Plains: A Memoir of Family, Secrets, and Silence. I first interviewed her back in 2010, when I was working on my memoir. (You […]
SUMMER. When everything swelters, and the world seems as though it’s come to a halt in the heat. When you retreat indoors to your air conditioned space or, maybe, travel somewhere exotic just to get away, it’s a good time to journal about the season you’re in. I’ve created a […]
IN JANUARY OF 2016, I made a commitment to myself—as part of my writing life and to meet my writing goals, I would go on a weekend-long writing retreat at least twice each year. As I searched for a retreat that would suit my needs, I began to realize that […]
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 / […]
WHEN LEARNING THE CRAFT OF WRITING — which, as far as I am concerned, is a never-ending state of being — we often hear the refrain that we should “show, not tell.” “Showing” means writing in scene, using physical actions, sense-based details, and dialogue to create the story, rather than explaining […]
ANYONE WHO HAS WRITTEN A MEMOIR KNOWS that it’s hard work. Not at the beginning, necessarily, but when you’re part way through, and that nice, round idea you had of your story has become fragmented by scenes and summaries of scenes, and reflections about those scenes The memories aren’t clear […]
