Life is always at the point of the pendulum swing. Events over the Christmas break have started me thinking about how reality and how we think we will react to life’s swings of the pendulum are always different. Several years ago, after my father died, my sister and I decided we were going to go…
Memory is essential for everything we do. We learn through memory, understand through memory, forgive and even forget by way of memory. We revisit our past and consider our futures all through memories built from ours and others recall. Recently, chatting with H. M. Jones whom I met on GooglePlus just a week or so…
Health in all its dimensions. I am a firm believer that being healthy leads to all sorts of benefits. As a writer, I especially want to do the things that add quality to my writing. The more healthy I am, the better I think, write, plan, organize, and step into another person’s (replace with character’s)…
Poorly written stories make for a blurry book, lacking color Lately, due to my lighter teaching schedule, I have been reading a book a week, minimum. (Last year, a book every two months was my average.) Usually I will read a book to the end, waiting for it to redeem itself if it is less…
The bowl. My husband and I used to tandem bicycle race. We traveled about quite a bit because tandem racing has never been a sport that takes place often nor was it held at numerous sites in close vicinity to each other. We had a compact car, a Datson 210. My husband was a serious…
Just let me learn Writers learn all the time. We want not just our facts as close to accurate as possible, poetic license not withstanding, but we are always looking for inspiration. So we cannot help but be active learners. And we do it like this. We go looking for what kind of pine trees…
I read an article about the various distinct cultural nations within the United States and found it very useful for determining the underlying influences of characters in fiction. In this article which made use of the work of Colin Woodard, Matthew Speizer provides (This map shows the US really has 11 separate ‘nations’ with entirely…
Every writer needs a strong posture. I recently watched a TED talks video, Amy Cuddy’s “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are.” As a teacher, I understand the dynamics of body language. I read my students’ body language all the time and modify my approach to match or alter their attitudes so the class runs…
