The Power of 10 Minutes

Ten minutes. Start with that. Last month, at our annual invigorating Wild Writing in the Boreal retreat, I found myself suggesting it often. One participant said, Yes, because then you’ll keep going. If you do 10, you’ll do 20, even an hour. Maybe, I replied. But you can also just fill those 10 minutes. It […]

Cover Reveal!

I am blessed to have an incredibly talented and creative mother. If you’ve listened to the first lesson in my course about establishing a strong writing practice (set as a free preview lesson today so you can, if you like), you’ll know that she started painting to save her own life, following a devastating head-on […]

Fun!

I’ve been thinking about fun lately. Seems strange, given the state of the world. Ugh. But something has shifted in me (if you’re a regular reader, you’ve probably read that before… insert self-deprecating chuckle here…) Maybe it’s the result of the last few years, learning over and over again how fragile life is, how short. […]

Adding Compost to the Soil

Day after day of dazzling sunshine has lately lifted my spirits. It helps too that I sent off my poetry manuscript to the publisher this week and that the birds are back. Purple finches and dark-eyed juncos at our backyard feeder. White pelicans crowding the Red River. Hawks, eagles, and, of course, robins. A multitude […]

Beet Juice

Create a character, I said last night, during a class I’m teaching called Write Your Heart Out! (from Joyce Carol Oates’s advice to writers). A picture of feet was up on the screen. Red converse sneakers, legs in jeans, gender-neutral. Paint what you can’t see. Follow the pen into backstory, emotions, relationships or simply a […]