Notes From the Toolbox
My Dark & Stormy Journey to Gratitude
Happy Thanksgiving, y’all! Can I signoff now? It’s what I want to do. Not because I’d rather be working on the revision, or because the deadline is closing in, or because a gazillion guests will arrive any minute and more desserts and vegetable dishes need to be made....
How to Download your Writing
My oldest son used to love to say, "Back in the day." I hated it because he started to use it in his late twenties to refer not only to his childhood but to mine; his inflection made it sound like this, “You know, back in the day like in the Middle Ages, you remember,...
Why NaNoWriMo is not for Me
A plethora of writers around the world are in their 2nd week of NaNoWriMo. For anyone unfamiliar with the vernacular that’s National Novel Writing Month. The goal— write approximately 1,666 words a day for the entire month to achieve the ultimate goal of a 50,000-word...
High Anxiety
4 November 2020— the United States’ presidential election was yesterday. Voting by mail was huge thanks to Covid-19, and early voting was as popular as a summer action flick, and yet, no winner has been called. I remember when High Anxiety was just a movie by Mel...
BIG MAGIC’s Magic
If you’ve managed to avoid, or have not yet reached the senior moments in life, you may recall how I was kidnapped by Chuck Palahniuk. His memoir, Consider This, is a must read for any writer with a desire to extract the cement from their writing. One of my goals for...
There Is No Finish Line
I’ve been attending a lot of author events since the world went virtual. At first, the number of events was overwhelming. It felt as if every creative individual wanted a piece of me, which is silly because no one knows me, other than y’all. Thanks, for being here....
Rewrites
Abigail and I came across Isabel and her dog Dot the other day. They used to be Weekenders. But once Governor Cuomo ordered all nonessential businesses close statewide, they became permanent dwellers in the acreage next to mine. Isabel is an architectural historian,...
Unexpected Inspiration
One of my friends starts chemo today (that’s yesterday in your world dear friends, readers and voyeurs). In order to combat the mounting dread of the procedure and perhaps to sidestep the potential side effects, she decided to put together a meditation board of funny...
Artist Date Rebellion
One of the basic tools for Julia Cameron’s the Artist’s Way 12-week program is the Artist Date. A block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist. In its most primary form, the...
A Passageway to Hope
My neighbor and I barely see each other. We literally can’t see each other because her house sits on the hill behind mine and is obscured by the forest between us. Acres of land surround all the houses in the area where I live. About once a month we wave from our...