"What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my imagination?" ~ Toni Morrison

Wherever you are, look around and spend five or ten minutes writing down everything you notice.  Is there a cracked bowl on the kitchen counter waiting to be mended?  A stack of firewood beside the stove?  Is the dog sleeping…

Are you a swooper, or a basher? "Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way.  Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work.  Bashers go one sentence at a…

For many people who tend toward confessional writing, drawing from their own experiences and emotions, there’s a pressure to make everything just right, to perfectly translate their life so that readers can experience the same sensations, the same feelings they…

So, you’ve gone out into the world with your eyes open and your notebook in hand.  You’ve noticed your breath hanging in the brisk, raw air, watched the chickadees flitting around the feeder you’re always forgetting to fill, listened to…

Give them a beloved turtle.  Give them a spouse with bone cancer.  Give them a profound fear of the ocean.  Give them a lucky sock.  Make them interesting.  You might find yourself creating characters that you’ll use later in your…

You are a writer, and what you write is deserving, is worthy, is worthwhile.  Your writing matters.  You may not believe this fully.  You may have only a small, tremulous suspicion that your words, your ideas, are valuable, but nonetheless,…