When Writing Is Like Good Sex…

When your inner critic nags you to get busy writing too early it ruins the experience. It’s premature — like thinking of sexual foreplay as procrastination.
Jumping in the sack with your text editor too soon ignores your need for rumination and inspiration. Just as the anticipation of foreplay enriches sex, ruminating, playing and [...]

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How Make-believe And Play Enhance Writing

Make-believe is “Imaginative intellectual play” (WordNet database — Princeton University). Invite your dragon to play, to help rediscover your childhood imagination, and watch your writing come alive.

Take a peek into Emily’s imaginative world. She was a real princess that day. Emily and her friends weren’t simply pretending, they were princesses. Logical? Not for these six [...]

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When Pro Writers are Blocked, What Do They Do?

They sit down to write, but they might open a can of cat food first. Complaining about writer’s block is like looking at the cat food dish and complaining that it’s empty. Of course it’s empty — you have to fill it. When you have deadlines and commitments, not writing isn’t an option. You don’t [...]

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Musings: On The Tao of Writing

Writing is difficult? Writing is easy? Yes it is.
“Easy gives rise to difficult … resonance harmonizes sound, after follows before.” — Lau Tzu
When the vessel is empty, fill it to overflowing. When the vessel is overflowing, distill the essence. — McD
Western thought is either/or, an artificial duality that, when focused on one aspect of some [...]

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Inspiration: Girl’s Night Out at the Diner

The twins were 9 months old the other day. We all went to the diner for dinner on Monday night so naturally I brought my camera. My daughter calls me pop-poparazzi. I love B&W available light photography and who could resist subjects like these. My granddaughters have always been my favorite subjects and now we [...]

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Monday Musings: Dragons are Like Bees

Judging ideas as they form kills them. The constant interplay of ideas is the wellspring of creativity. When you are attuned to the play of your dragon, writing flows freely, never still, like bees flitting from flower to flower, tasting and sampling the nectar of many ideas.

Bees, like the ideas in our minds, are constantly [...]

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Word Processing: The Enemy of Writing

I don’t know what I’m thinking until I write. I can’t remember who said that or if my remembering is even accurate. Writing has nothing to do with word processing, the eternal quest for the perfect editor or the latest megaflop — do everything faster — super computer. Technology is the enemy of writing, a [...]

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Relax and Ruminate: Your Dragon Will Thank You

Sometimes doing nothing is the best way to boost your productivity. Ruminating isn’t the same as procrastinating. When you ruminate, you relax and allow the moment to carry you. Call it daydreaming, ruminating, musing… the words don’t matter. You’re not denying reality, you’re giving in to genuine reality and opening the lines of communication with [...]

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Poke Yourself When Your Dragon’s Draggin’

Trying to get the words out by brute force is like pounding on a bottle of cold ketchup. It never works. Warm up with some fun and the words will pour out faster than you can type. Follow Julia’s example and be silly. Bet you can’t look at this picture without smiling. Go ahead, poke [...]

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The Inviting Essence of a Solitary Rose

Roses are special. This monochrome image pays homage to all roses. The rose that posed for this photo died 39 years ago in 1970, yet lives on as the essence of a solitary rose. After all this time, I’m eager to share one of my favorite photos with my friends.

I’ve always had an affinity for [...]

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