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Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Progress on my book has been slow—not stopped, just slow—but I choose to view this as a good thing.

After years of thrashing about and achieving zero forward movement, I’m finally getting words on paper (yes, literally; I’m a longhand writer). Last night I finished the second scene, and now that it’s all keyed in and backed up, I decided to reflect a bit and see if I could identify the reasons why I’m having such a tough time building momentum.

It didn’t take long to find several culprits, including a slew of bad habits that I’ve developed during the fallow years. While I certainly have to deal with those bad habits, they’re specific to me and my life, and thus irrelevant to writing, per se, so I’ll skip discussing them here. Two issues, however, I think are worth discussing, as other writers may experience something similar. (more…)

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I don’t want family
I don’t want friends
I don’t want a community

I want a world

A world where we all treat each other
like members of the community
like dearest friends
like cherished family

I want a world

k

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A year or so ago, like many other stressed-out adults searching for a bubble of calm in a turbulent world, I turned to a solution that was trending through social media: coloring. It was a fairly good solution, too. Coloring, for however long I chose to enjoy it, provided a period of quiet meditation combined with guided creativity. After a tempestuous day of corporate politics and political upheaval, I could look forward to spending an hour, head down, blending colors across mandalas and designs with whatever palette suited my whim. I could listen to music or to the birds outside in the wisteria or to the simple, basic sound of pencil and paper. It was a refuge, a Fortress of Coloring Solitude.

But when my father died, I stopped. (more…)

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The problem with good books is that they show me how much I still must improve, to elevate my writing from “good” to “great.”

News of the World, by Paulette Jiles, is one such book. Damn.

An aging veteran travels the backroads in post-Civil War Texas, reading newspaper articles to townsfolk who either can’t read or don’t have access to papers from the big cities. He’s asked to take with him a young girl, captured by the Kiowa when she was six, and bring her back to her relatives near San Antonio. (more…)

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Psst. . .

C’mere.

I’ve got a secret.

Promise not to tell? (more…)

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Bad diarist! No biscuit!

Back during The Event, I once again started a journal. I’ve kept a journal, off and on, for most of my life (though it’s definitely been more off than on). Like many diarists, I pick up my journal in times of strife and pain, writing each day (or more often) to rant, moan, analyze, introspect, and claw my way back toward something that resembles sanity. As the drama subsides, however, my journalistic fervor wanes in response; I am simply not compelled to catalogue the minutiae of my days.

And that is the point at which I begin to feel a sense of failure. (more…)

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I’d heard of them long before I saw one in the wild. Rare, elusive, they were things of power and legend. Sure, I saw them in movies, but I knew those were fakes; we all did.

The C-note. The Benjamin. One hundred smackeroos.

I was nine years old when I saw my first one.

We were at Tiburon Tommie’s, the Chinese restaurant of my youth, a place where the drinks menu was long and fixed, and the food menu was short and subject to change. (more…)

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