I’m not a devout follower of New Age thinking. I’m a cradle Catholic but I have a hard time believing that God doesn’t give us the tools to explore other ways of thinking. My Ma always had Buddhist and pagan symbols in the house while insisting we go through baptism, first communion, and confirmation. She…
Writing has always been a therapeutic endeavor for me. I turned to poetry when I had no other voice. I realized quickly that my will to live was intertwined with the art of writing when I channeled my teenage rage and post-adolescent hangups on paper. I graduated from poetry eventually to deciding to major in…
I wanted to share how I manage my day, coming from a technologically-inclined writing geek such as myself. I’m a big fan of Google products. I’ve tried a lot of different programs over the years but somehow Google comes up with products that are similar to and exceed them. What’s great is that these programs are…
AWP is an annual conference for writers, teachers, students, editors, and publishers. AWP is an acronym for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. I went to my very first one while in my grad program. It was a learning experience, to say the least. It was an onslaught of information and positive vibes. It…
Book Riot’s podcast episode #219 put me on to the fact that Riley Sager is a pen name for a fella named Todd Ritter. Jezebel broke the story. Every write-up that followed – including Book Riot – made the clipped observation that it’s uncool for men to flip the script and create ambiguous-sounding pen names…
The first draft used to be a horrible, mentally draining aspect of the writing process for me, before I decided I wanted to be a professional writer. I was so caught up in trying to be perfect from the moment I put words on the page that I never let myself relax enough to enjoy…
Writing to me has been cathartic, throughout my entire life. There has never been a time when I wasn’t writing. I would write a poem, short story, or similar, and then hide it away from the world because I was afraid of people seeing who I really am. Or I would let my friends see…
Being a creative person seems counterproductive in our go-go-go world. The recession did nobody any favors. COVID-19 tanked a lot of creative journeys. Worrying about the state of the world may have overloaded your emotional well-being. Maybe you were a college grad turned out right in the middle of the 2008 recession. That was me…