Tip Sheet of the Month

    Plot Wheels

    If you’ve ever wondered about how Earl Stanley Gardener came up with hundreds of plots for Perry Mason, look no further. He used plot wheels– he would choose his hero from one wheel list, a bad guy from another wheel list, the action from a third and so on.

    Now … Continue reading

    Best of Web

    bibme.org

    If you have ever struggled with a bibliography, this site is a godsend. You simply choose the style of bibliography you want for the major types— APA, Turabian, Chicago, MLA.

    Then you type in the name of the book and the search engine finds it and put it in the biblography according to the style … Continue reading

    POETRY

    Bookstore Owner

    She lost her bookstore and then her mind.
    Her friends took her in.
    But she longed for the corner on the street
    where the bookstore used to stand,

    Now she camps in the entryway of a building
    on the corner of the street where the bookstore once stood.
    She stares silently at the passersby.

    The bookstore disappeared twenty years ago
    But her mind never returned.

    Jason Reynolds

    Hypnosis Session Spotlight

    Going Deeper

    The audio material available here moves the list are from focused breathing, to progressive muscle relaxation, and then an imaginary elevator ride to a beautiful beach. The intent of this program is to slowly offer increased levels of dissociation aimed at promoting deep relaxation and freedom from frustrations that can arise with writers block. The … Continue reading

    Book Review

    Sudden Genius by Andrew Robinson

    Sudden Genius by Andrew Robinson

    Robinson studies geniuses and his book is a study of ten geniuses in field ranging from science and film, to music and literature. Because the sweep is so grand, he cannot find similarities. For example, he says there is no creative personality.

    Similarly, he finds that formal education plays no role in creativity, but formal education is only a small part of most genius’s education. Family and marriage sometimes help, but not really. In other words, there is no clue how to increase one’s own creativity, which is the reason I read books like this. He does say that it … Continue reading

    Workaholism

    Workaholism

    Workaholism
    OK, Balzac worked around the clock and drank only coffee.

    But we’re interested in staying alive during your entire writing career. No burn-outs allowed.

    Here are the beliefs of workaholics:
    • Work as infinite and insatiable
    • Work requires deprivation and sacrifice.
    • Work protects me from scary intimacy.

    In his wonderful book on procrastination, The Now Habit, Neil Fiore says play is necessary to writing and all creative endeavors. Play get us to unwind and write more comfortably. Certainly if we saw our writing as divine play, the doubts would disappear.

    Fiore says we suffer from three major blocks– the fear of being overwhelmed, the fear of failure and the fear of not finishing the work. He has a plan for getting around these blocks. I also found … Continue reading

    HB

    Harry Bernstein struggled to become a writer all his life and finally received critical acclaim and literary fame when his first memoir about his childhood, [u]The Invisible Wall[/u], was published when he was ninety-six years old. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review.

    He published a second memoir a year later when he was ninety-seven.

    On Happiness


    Writers are often known for their depressions.  But is there anything we can do about it? I’m finding that letting go of everything improves my mood a lot.  Nisargadatta teaches that life goes on spontaneously and we don’t have to put energy into anything.  As whacky as that sounds,  it is working.  I realized I was putting energy into driving, … Continue reading

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