I love magic tricks. Card tricks, sleight of hand, people disappearing into boxes and slipping out of chains. I don’t understand any of them, but I love them. Even though the astonishment I experience makes me feel a bit stupid and crazy, I usually I end up laughing because I’m so perplexed by what the illusionist just did right in front of my eyes. Last year,…
I was hardly prepared for the weekend that just passed. I have a habit of being revved up and excited before a writer’s conference (and grumpy, exhausted, and burned out, after one), but this excited pre-conference state is understandable, right? It’s like being a candy shop of learning that’s jam-packed with people who are just as crazy as I am about how to tell a good…
Examination of Symptoms: “When I touch the skin under my eye, I can feel the muscles twitch,” I tell my friend at our weekly coffee shop date. I wrap my hand around my salted caramel latte as if it can hug me back. I need hugs like oxygen today. Earlier that morning I tell my husband, “This is a nervous twitch, not a caffeine twitch.” The…
All right everyone, put on your thinking caps. I'm considering the ways we prefer to be inspired. At a WOTS steering committee meeting last night we were debating the theme for our next year's writing contest. Entrants are given a word or phrase which they must use to form their work of fiction, poetry or non-fiction. Last night we narrowed our choices down to two words, which for now shall be locked away in my secret…
"We're sorry to inform you that your submission was not a good fit for our magazine. Best of luck finding a place for it elsewhere." Haven't we all been there? There's no way I can avoid being refused or ignored when I take my art and show it to the masses. Rejection is a fact of the writing life. How in the world do I find ways to keep my…
I was entranced by the candid, encouraging and graceful presence of Natalie Goldberg earlier this month. She spoke as the keynote at the Write on the Sound Writers' Conference in Edmonds, WA the first weekend of this month and the theater was packed. Natalie is very famous for her book Writing Down the Bones. She began her talking by jumping right into her process of discovering herself and becoming…