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Posts tagged ‘writers’

Dec 4

3 Comments

Submit, Submit, Submit

Writers, you know how it goes. You submit to journals and contests, learning to ignore the rejections as they pile up. With a Zen-like mastery, you learn to frame rejection as a positive thing. If you weren’t submitting, you wouldn’t be rejected. And if you weren’t writing, you wouldn’t be submitting. And if you weren’t writing, you wouldn’t be a writer. Hence, using this somewhat reductionist — and albeit recursive — logic, rejection is a good thing. It means you’re a writer.

And every now and then, something like this arrives in your in-box, and the affirmation feels very, very good.

Cutthroat.finalist

Soldier on, dear ones!

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May 1

4 Comments

Sh*t’s Gettin Real

MH_Do_Or_Die

Come see me at Insta.

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Dec 1

1 Comment

Meme of the Week

become-a-writer

As found here. Happy Friday.

Nov 25

Meme of the Week

d0c0b1b41b08b8f15ece7159b0d4d4f5

As found here. Happy weekend.

 

Nov 11

3 Comments

Thinking About Role Models

role_modelToday I’m thinking about role models. Role models on the international stage, alive today, who are exemplars for ourselves and for our children. As we grapple with continually breaking stories about A-list sexual impropriety, sexual assault, questionable business dealings, and most every kind of NO YOU DIDN’T, it’s increasingly difficult to settle on well-known paragons of the behavior that we want to emulate and want to hold up as examples to our children.

What is a role model? In its deepest expression, a role model is a person whose behavior you want to emulate. Who embodies and exemplifies your personal values, interests, and beliefs. While on the one hand we understand intellectually that we all, as humans, make mistakes, we want our role models to be beyond reproach. We don’t want to have to say, “Well, this person is amazing and upright in 90% of his or her actions and speech, so I’ll ignore that pesky 10% of not-so-great choices.” We don’t want our most beloved icons to have feet of clay.

When I sat down to write a list of my personal role models — alive, well-known, and scandal-free — I had an extremely difficult time of it. I managed to come up with 30 names, but it wasn’t easy.

I share my personal list with you not because I want to create partisanship (my list is rather left-leaning), but because I want to contribute to an honest conversation about what we hold as important on a societal level; what we want to espouse as our legacy. With your help, I’d like to triple my list, which is notably low on artists (partly because many artists are not visible personalities).

The 30 people on my list are, to my knowledge, people of character. They are leaders. I may not agree with everything these people do and stand for, but I believe that their choices are guided by something I respect. I believe that these people want to make a significant and positive impact on the world — and that they share of themselves and their talents at least in part from altruism. My selections are people who are generally esteemed as “nice people.” I get warm fuzzies thinking about them.

My list, segmented by cisgender (for no good reason) and otherwise in random order:

Females

  1. Michelle Obama
  2. Brené Brown
  3. JK Rowling
  4. Helen Mirren
  5. Maggie Smith
  6. Judy Dench
  7. Oprah Winfrey
  8. Rachel Maddow
  9. Martha Plimpton
  10. Ellen Degeneres
  11. Malala Yousafzai
  12. Judy Blume
  13. Viola Davis
  14. Pema Chödrön
  15. Emma Watson
  16. Toni Morrison
  17. Byron Katie

Males

  1. His Holiness the Dalai Lama
  2. Barack Obama
  3. Pope Francis
  4. Justin Trudeau
  5. John McCain
  6. Neil Gaiman
  7. Steven King
  8. Nicholas Kristoff
  9. Trevor Noah
  10. Steven Colbert
  11. Gabor Maté
  12. Thich Nhat Hanh
  13. Gary Zukav

And you? Who are the role models, alive today and free of scandal, that inspire you and serve as guides along the pathway of self-betterment? Please add your thoughts in the comments. Let’s grow this list!

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Sep 29

1 Comment

Meme of the Week

Yes, please. I’m listening to Brené Brown’s new book, Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone,and I’m falling in love with Brené all over again. I’m pretty sure I should keep ALL of her audiobooks on my phone and listen to them on endless rotation. Every time I read or hear her work, it hits me at a deeper level — and always feels like exactly what I need in the given moment. Don’t you find that the most authentic work does that to you?

In our Meme of the Week, here’s a keeper from Brené’s 2015 book Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead,as found at her website:

RS_Manifesto.b_8x10

Happy Friday.

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Sep 8

3 Comments

Meme of the Week

Writing-Advice

Happy Friday.

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Aug 28

The Monday Post: 8.28.17

Victoria Moran quote

Happy Monday, friends! What in the creative realm would you like to accomplish this week? Comment below with the what, when, and how! And if you commented on last week’s Monday Post, let us know how things went: the hiccups as well as the successes.

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Aug 14

The Importance of Making Space

A favorite from the archives of 2011!

home_office_CCMaking space for your creative work is almost as important as making time for your creative work. When you have a work space that feels inviting and inspiring — even if it’s just the corner of a room — turning to your creative work feels like a delightful retreat, rather than just another item on your endless “to-do” list.

In her fabulous book The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp notes: “To get the creative habit, you need a working environment that’s habit-forming.” When you have a space that calls to you, it’s easier to go there regularly. Regularity, as Tharp points out throughout her book (as the title would suggest), is the heart of creative output.

We all know Virginia Woolf’s famous dictum that “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Woolf was speaking about the feminist need for independence in order to create. Most of us probably feel comparatively liberated, despite the fact that we have children and Woolf did not — but her point is well taken.

Many of us don’t have the luxury of our own room or even the corner of a room to call our own. We take over the dining table when the muse strikes and then have to dismantle the work area when it’s time to eat. If this is the case for you, brainstorm ways to make this process as user-friendly as possible.

It’s also possible that there IS a nook or cranny lurking in your home that you could claim for yourself with a bit of re-thinking. Bring your creative skills to finding a space in your home that helps you return to your creative, authentic self as seamlessly as possible. And if you’re fortunate enough to have your own space, you might spend a bit of time in the coming month editing out anything in this space that doesn’t work for you anymore. Clean it up, organize, bring in a few fresh visuals that speak to you. Make it yours. Then, dig in.

What works for you?

“Without the studio, however humble,
the room where the imagination can enter
cannot exist.” ~Anna Hansen

This piece was reprinted from the Creative Times, our periodic newsletter. Click here to subscribe!

Photo courtesy Hiné Mizushima.

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Sep 25

5 Comments

Meme of the Week

Being an artist

Happy Friday.

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Sep 18

2 Comments

Meme of the Week

James Clear quote

Happy Friday.

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Aug 28

3 Comments

Meme of the Week

The desire to create

As found here. Happy Friday.

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