It's always harder to find time to write during the summer, and when I do find it I use it to work on my WIP rather than blogging. So my blog posts will continue to be sporadic throughout the summer. I haven't done a Friday Five style post in a while. So today I thought I'd bring you a Friday Five of Inspiration.

1.

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You hear this a lot in writing circles -- write what you know. It occurs to me that this statement can mean many different things. Does it mean I can only ever write about a dark-skinned Jewish girl who grew up in the South? I don't think so. And for some years I struggled with what it really means to write what you know. I tried writing about ( Read more... )

If you were to see me around town, you might wonder what is going on with me. I might appear a bit tuned out or jetlagged or like I'm just not all there. It's because I'm not. I'm maybe one-third here and two-thirds in the world of the first draft I'm working on. Could be reversed, depends on the day. I've got one of those characters in my head ( Read more... )

Something miraculous has happened.... I am loving revising my work-in-progress. ME! -- a first-draft-loving pantser, who has been known to despise revising. Not this time ( Read more... )

Yesterday was Poem in Your Pocket Day, part of the celebration of National Poetry Month. One of my favorite poets is Mary Oliver. I want to touch on two of her poems. The first is called The Summer Day:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the ( Read more... )

As the holiday weekend approaches, I've been thinking about the meaning of the various holidays, and how this time of year is a reminder about rebirth, renewal, and appreciating our freedom. The weather in the Bay Area is perfect for this right now: After many weeks of rain and fog, the sun is shining, the sky is the bluest of blues, the breeze is ( Read more... )

As part of my focus on embracing life this year, I've been working at learning to accept life as it is, being with what is so. What does that even mean? It means that when something unexpected happens, instead of freaking out and trying to change it, I take a deep breath, remind myself to trust that this is what needs to happen right now, and that ( Read more... )

My thoughts continue this week on the concept of embracing life. I've been thinking about how affected we are by our interpretations of events, by the way we label what's happening in our lives. As I read others' blog posts and listen to others' path to publication stories, here's something I notice: Some of us receive rejections and say, "I suck. ( Read more... )

I have figured out why I don't enjoy revision as much as creation. When I write, I fall into that dreamy, otherworldly place where time stops, where my thinking/busy mind settles, where intuition takes over. Some people find that place through drawing or dancing or windsurfing or cooking. For me, writing is what takes me there. But when I'm ( Read more... )

Something I've been working on lately is learning to trust life, to let go of all the resistance that rises up so quickly to whatever might be happening. I know that so much of that resistance is fear. And I want to learn to calm down and take life as it comes and see its beauty ( Read more... )