Category Archives for "On Writing"

Belief Isn’t Faith

It's Personal , On Writing

Three of my uncles are ministers, pastors, preachers. Sometimes I get muddy on the details of their exact titles, so I loosely refer to them as “men of the cloth.” Today I had the pleasure of hearing my uncle, a Methodist minister, give his Sunday sermon at a welcoming church on the outskirts of Seattle. His sermon was thought-provoking and unusual in its delivery – interspersing YouTube clips and footage from one of the Indiana Jones movies to illustrate his point about the difference between “faith” and “belief.” Belief, as I understood his message, is more passive. He pointed out how faith can be misconstrued as a noun, but he challenged his congregation to view it as a verb. Action. Active. Motion. Moving. Compelling.Continue reading

Remembering Right

On Writing

“I can’t name these colors accurately and it frustrates me,” I told him. For weeks I’d been trying to find the right words to describe the slate blues, charcoal grays, and sherbet oranges I’d been stalking during my sunset walkabouts around town. He offered words on the pastel spectrum, but like my admittedly limp offerings, none of them were quite right. When I sit down to write, this is one of the frustrating moments – the wanting to express something your mind can see, but the words won’t come out to play; they simply won’t cooperate. I know it’s my failing, not theirs.Continue reading

What Does Your Couch Look Like?

On Writing

Russ Morris via Compfight

Thanks to this post by Allison Vesterfelt, I shared this on Facebook:

What social media would look like if we all showed our proverbial “couches”? Would it be more interesting or would it make people cringe and turn away? Or, better yet, cringe and pick up the phone to invite that person out?

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Supporting Actors, 2012

On Writing

Vincent via Compfight

Today I awoke in the pre-dawn hours and decided to make insomnia productive by culling through and recycling two years’ worth of magazines I’d shamefully hidden in corners of my living room. Though they cost only a dollar or so an issue – like a frugal, Depression-era miser – the word-lover in me felt immeasurable guilt for letting them linger, largely unread, for so long.Continue reading

I Thought I Came for the Caffeine

On Writing

JASON ANFINSEN

“The thing that you had to force yourself  to do — the actual act of writing — turns out to  be the best part. It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing is its own reward.” ~Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

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Recording and Recounting

On Writing

tread via Compfight

One of my favorite “daddy bloggers,” Jim Griffioen, had an interesting perspective to share on today’s Apartment Therapy. His sentiments were along the vein of my thoughts from earlier in the week on why we write, many of us so very publicly.Continue reading

Be conscientious. Be fluid. Write.

On Writing

As a writer, I always struggle with what to share publicly and looking at past posts, this appears to be a recurring theme on this site. In my editing program, one of the last sections of reading in the course pack was an article titled, “Eleven Essential Questions” [on Book Development, excerpted from Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents, 20th Edition, 2010]. This article was a beacon in the night to someone like me, a writer, almost “official” certified editor, and dabbler in life that wants to share the ups and downs of it with the world, but doesn’t know if there’s relevance in what she’s trying to say.Continue reading

An Updated “About”

On Writing

Hello visitor!

I would like to thank you for dropping by my little slice of virtual real estate. In the months since my last post in January, I have successfully (with the aid of my tech-friend Brian) conquered a virus that was causing Google to flag my site as a place a visitor might not want to visit. I found it apropos that the January image on my last post was taken from an alley. Albeit not a darkened one.Continue reading

Why We Write

On Writing

Walden Pond Replica of Where Thoreau Wrote

“Everything I do in life, I do out of sheer joy. I drop my fruit like a ripened tree.  What others do with it when I am done, is not my concern.”  Henry Miller

I seem to be getting a lot of mileage out of this quote in recent weeks. It was shared with me a couple of weeks ago by a friend on the other side of the country with whom I toss several hundred-word missives back and forth with. His perspective is always appreciated because a) he’s not a woman and therefore does not think like one and b) he’s a heck of a lot less jaded than many of the friends in my immediate sphere.Continue reading

My attempt at fiction…

On Writing

Two weeks ago, I was sitting next to a woman at the informational session for numerous University of Washington certificate programs that begin this fall. She was there for the fiction section, I was there for the editing section. As we waited for our respective groups to be assigned rooms, I commented to her that I was never one to write fiction and that my imagination wasn’t up to snuff in that regard. I admired her penchant for creativity and she, my affinity for detail. We parted amiably and the conversation has stayed with me since.Continue reading