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Spring Has Sprung

Spring Has Sprung

Mar 20, 2019
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Happy warm weather and sunshine, friends! Today marks the first day of spring, and I for one can’t WAIT for the world to turn into a colorful rainbow of flowers. I’m tired of cold and the barren look of leafless trees.

While it’s not too warm here yet in NJ, it was a bright, sunshiny day that allowed me to work a little outside and take a walk around the lake at a local park. It was beautiful, even if a bit windy and cold.

In honor of the new season, I’m sharing my very first “real” poem with all of you, about nature of course!

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Giving Up on a Story

Giving Up on a Story

Mar 13, 2019
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Writing stories is hard work. So often, you’re banging your head against a wall, trying to figure out the next step, the next plot point, the next thing your character will say and do. So often you feel stuck until the miraculous happens and your brain unsticks itself with the perfect solution.

So what happens when you continue to be stuck? What happens when you know, deep in your heart, that you have to give up on this story?

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Vulnerability is at the Heart of Creativity

Vulnerability is at the Heart of Creativity

Mar 06, 2019
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Starting something new is hard.

Creating outside of your comfort zone is terrifying.

What do you do when the fear and resistance demons come for you?

Recently, I signed up for a business mentorship program to help me get my editing business off the ground, and let me tell you, the price tag and expectations are daunting. This will be the scariest thing I’ve ever done. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing; in fact, this fear probably means it is.

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The Truth About Creative Nonfiction

The Truth About Creative Nonfiction

Feb 27, 2019
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I wanted to discuss a little today about what the term “creative nonfiction” means. Everything you read has some bias to it, some judgement, some slant: even news articles can’t include every fact, and the ones they choose to tell share some of their personality and beliefs with us.

Autobiographies and biographies work this way, too. Stories about a person’s life are often mostly true, not always altogether the fact-by-fact representation—especially for memoir. The author is concerned with telling the greater Truth of the matter and the story more than they are with painting every little detail exactly as it happened, as they should.

Lives don’t unfold like stories, and in order to read—and get inspired by—a person’s tale, it needs to live and breathe like a story, not just a random assortment of facts and figures.

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Message to Money LIVE Conference

Message to Money LIVE Conference

Feb 21, 2019
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I’ve been twiddling my thumbs for AGES now about starting my editing business, not really knowing how to begin or where to find clients. I have the experience, I have the know-how, but I do not have the business sense to get me going on my own. So, this past weekend, I attended Message to Money LIVE in Los Angeles, a business conference that is run by Marisa Murgatroyd of Live Your Message. The conference and her company are exactly what they sound like: how to build a business based around your personal message to the world.

Let me tell you, friends, this conference was AMAZING. Transformative, really. I learned tons, met loads of new friends, and got inspired to get going on my editing (and maybe coaching?) business that I’ve been dragging my feet on for months. Years, really. I just haven’t known where to get started, and these few days really solidified a few things for me.

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Losing Friends on Your Journey

Losing Friends on Your Journey

Feb 13, 2019
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I had a dream last night about a former friend I’m no longer in contact with, and those kinds of dreams always tug at the heartstrings. No one likes to lose a friend, but it’s why I lost this friend that I’d like to discuss today. I lost them for my art.

Now, losing friends throughout our lives is a sad but common occurrence. We grow into different stages and see them less often, develop different interests, become different people. The tomboy and the girly girl often have little to say to one another, as do the foodie and the person on a super restrictive diet. 

These stages are a natural part of our social evolution. A stage that not many talk about, though, but I have recently discovered? Losing a friend through jealousy.

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Deadline Delight

Deadline Delight

Feb 06, 2019
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Last Friday, I completed and submitted my first-ever play to an open call for a children’s play anthology. Woot woot! It’s a short play, only 15 minutes, but it’s a tall accomplishment. Trying something new, putting myself out there for possible rejection, getting everything written and polished and done on time—this called for a celebration!

Now, what would be the absolutely perfect “deadline delight” to gift myself with upon submitting a play? Why, a trip to Broadway, of course!

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Shadows of Doubt

Shadows of Doubt

Jan 30, 2019
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In the creative world, everyone feels doubt, not just the beginners. Big players like Neil Gaimon, Stephen King—even Mister-freaking-Rogers himself, Fred Rogers—have gone on record saying that there have been times from even the height of their success that they felt like imposters.

In my final exploration of lessons learned from Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (see parts one and two), I’d like to discuss a letter Fred Rogers wrote when he was preparing to return to Mister Rogers Neighborhood after it being off the air for a few years—AFTER HE WAS ALREADY A SUCCESS:

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John-Galting It Up with Friends

John-Galting It Up with Friends

Jan 23, 2019
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For those who don’t know, John Galt is a character in Ayn Rand’s magnum opus Atlas Shrugged, and ever since I read the 1,100-page tome in college, I’ve wanted to be John Galt. Or, at least, one of his followers. You see, John Galt “collects” the movers and shakers of the world and brings them to a month-long retreat every year where they get to interact with each other and do the things they love most in the world. For. A. Whole. Month. 

Like those antiquated-but-nostalgic stays that people used to do with each other when horse-drawn carriages were the primary mode of transportation, seen in books like Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice. People used to go and stay with friends for months at a time. 

I’ve always wanted friendships like these. I’ve always wanted visits like these, where nothing exists but the throng of fresh ideas being poured from every crevice of your being in a room full of like-minded individuals, writerly artistic ones, in my case.

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Love is at the Root of Everything

Love is at the Root of Everything

Jan 16, 2019
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Why are romance stories, or romance subplots in stories, so popular and ever-present? Because, in the words of the esteemed Fred Rogers, “love is at the root of everything. All learning, all parenting, all relationships. Love or the lack of it.”

Truer words were never spoken. This is part 2 of my series discussing truth bombs from the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (read part one here). These quotes give me a good jumping off point to start a conversation on some seriously important topics that have been mulling around in my brain (and to anyone who will listen) for years now.

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