Write with TLC

A name identifies a character and provides clues to ethnicity, gender, and familial relationships among other thing. Paying attention to the names assigned characters might seem secondary; however, those names can affect how a reader views each character's personality and identifies with the character. A name creates a relationship between the reader and the character. When a character reacts to their name, it provides the reader insight into the character's personality. When a character receives a nickname from another character or gives a character a nickname, the reader gets an insight into the thought process and personality of both characters involved. A nickname or lack of one can also establish the amount of intimacy or lack thereof between two characters. While a character's name rarely directly affects the plot, it can often allow the reader to understand motivations, see into a person's past and personality, and to identify with the character. When writing my ...

April is designated National Poetry Month . We are encouraged to celebrate poetry. by reading poetry, writing poetry, and sharing poetry. All poetry all the time for a month.  Then in May, we go back to our normal attitude toward poetry, whatever attitude that might be.  I'm fairly certain the intent is to remind people to embrace poetry all the time, but it doesn't seem to work that way.  People who truly love poetry, love poetry all year round. People who want to love poetry, tend to get nostalgic and determined during National Poetry Month. Those who hate poetry... Hhmmm! I guess they probably think National Poetry Month is a waste of time and energy, but I'm not really sure. Those who are apathetic toward poetry probably just don't notice National Poetry Month at all. As a reader of poetry, I appreciate the attention shift to poetry. I appreciate seeing poetry show up in places I didn't notice it before.  I appreciate people sharing poetry they normally wouldn...

As my husband drove our gold Ford F150 Lariat out of Lexington, Kentucky turning off Man O' War Boulevard on to Winchester Road, the landscape changed from stores and businesses to horse farms with black fences and pristine green pastures fronting beautiful homes - the kind of homes reminiscent of the glory days of Kentucky horse farms, large and stately. Horses grazed lazily in the fields swatting flies from their backs with their tails. Humidity laced the air causing our air condition to work harder. I opened my window just a little expecting the scent of overheated horse and manure to waft toward my nostrils. For just a moment, my mind tricked me into believing those odors were there. Those were the smells I remembered from this area. Instead the smell of exhaust mingled with hay and trees. I could no longer taste the freshness of newly cut clover on the air. Traffic whooshed by us interrupting the stillness of the farm community reminding me that progress exists everywhere. In ...

Recently while looking for a way to address my waning ability to focus, I remembered a presentation on ways to get back on track when one's writing suffers I'd been asked to give a few years ago. I dug through my files and found it. As I read it, I realized many of the items could apply to anyone, not just writers, who felt overwhelmed, stuck, or discouraged while working on a project, but I also realized I've developed new techniques since.  So, before we start, let's take a moment. I'd tell you to close your eyes, but then you couldn't read the next part. Take a deep breath and exhale. Another one. Let go of your day. Focus your thoughts on a project that you're struggling to complete. Don't focus on the why, just on the project itself. Imagine it completed and how you feel. Imagine abandoning the project and how you feel. Imagine working on it and how you feel. Now, I suggest you close your eyes as you imagine all that again while you slowly inhale an...

Sometimes we set goals and think we have everything all figured out only to have life shift under our feet like sand on the beach. Then we have to figure out what to do. We can give up. We can switch directions and look for better footing. We can re-evaluate the path we're on. We can keep digging our feet into the sand refusing to accept reality. I've done all of these at one time or another. This year was a year of shifting goals, and for the first time ever I felt like I moved with the changes without completely sinking into the sand. I felt like I kept my goals rooted on a steady foundation even when I faltered. I started the year with several goals. As the year progressed, I began to see how some of those goals needed major adjustments while others needed minor adjustments and still others needed to be packed away for the time being. As I face the end of the year, I can see clearly that my goals for the year are still in flux. I'm not going to meet a couple of...

Sometimes it's easy to only see our own point of view. It's the default mode. It takes an effort to look at someone and say with sincerity "I want to hear your side of the story." Usually, we're only willing to hear someone else's side of the story when we're backed into a corner. Interesting how that works. It helps us hang on to our own narrative and shields us from confronting our biases. Yet, when we take a deep breath and open ourselves to hearing another person's side of the story, we invite compassion and understanding into our relationships, into our lives, into our selves. So why is it so incredibly hard to do? We claim we're interested in each other. We claim we're interested in the truth. We claim we're interested in connecting. Yet, so often when the story doesn't fit the narrative in our hearts and minds, our defenses go up and we shut out the other story. I tell myself time and again I'm going to be open to...

Sometimes I find it impossible to quiet my mind. Today has been one of those days. As I've tried to work through the things I needed to do, my mind has felt chaotic. Even meditation didn't help much. Even yoga didn't help much. Today's post was scheduled to be about reading fiction, but instead I'm stuck on how difficult it can be to quiet one's mind even with all the tools that usually work. Sometimes we have to let ourselves feel the chaos in our minds in order to quiet it and move on. My meditation this morning focused on expanding one's light out into the world. As I meditated, my thoughts settled on my decision several years ago to make a concerted effort to live from a foundation of love. As I meditated, I imagined the light emanating from me as that foundation of love. The more I make a concerted effort to live from a place of love, the stronger I feel. Living from a place of love isn't about allowing people to walk all over me or abou...

Several of my teacher friends and others who work with youth have asked me if I have any ideas about how to get young people excited about poetry. I'm always a little surprised by the question. I write poetry. I don't teach poetry. Still, I find the question thought provoking. So I started thinking about what first got me excited about poetry... But, I can't remember. It seems to be poetry was always bubbling inside me. That said, I didn't always enjoy studying poetry, and there are times when I still don't understand the hubbub about one poet or another when I study their work. It happens. It's okay. The more I thought about it the more I came back to one single thing. Find the poetry in your audience's, aka your class's, life. Show them the poetry in songs, in commercials, in the nursery rhymes of their youth. Show them poetry by contemporary poets before asking them to dissect poems filled with language that feels foreign to them. While I don...

Is it ageism? Is it sexism? Is it both? Who gets to decide? With the release of Madonna's latest album, Madame X , there have been a lot of people writing about her in ageist, sexist ways while claiming it's neither ageist nor sexist. If "She's too old to be making pop music. Grandma needs to shut up." isn't sexist and ageist, then what is? She really is a person people love to hate... What exactly is the problem? Is it what she said when she said " I think the most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around."? I've been thinking about this because like Madonna I'm getting older; we all are. I've blogged about Madonna and her music enough for it to be fairly obvious I'm a long time fan.. I've often thought her best work was the work she didn't release as singles. It's those more thoughtful, reflective songs buried under the flash. I've often lamented some of her choices for singles because I thoug...

A few of the self-help books I read to address my fear of success. I've always been a very determined, ambitious person. Yet, there came a time when I realized that every time I got close to reaching a goal, I'd somehow sabotage it or I'd minimize my accomplishments . I shied away from publicizing my work. I started to play small when I most needed to be seen. I couldn't quite understand what was happening. At first I thought I feared failure, but I'd feared failure most of my life (more on this next week). This felt different. This behaved differently. Yet, I ended up reaching the same stalemate. Over time I started to see how often I downplayed what I did well and focused on what I did poorly. It dawned on me that I had somehow begun to fear success. At first I dismissed this as silly. Who fears success? I didn't even think that was a thing, which is strange since I studied psychology. How the hell could someone whose whole life had been about achievin...

Creating and keeping a schedule isn't always easy for me. There I said it. I find it easy to allow the flexibility of my schedule to allow me to think I don't need a schedule or to allow my goals and tasks to fall behind. In reality though if I'm going to accomplish my goals I need a schedule to keep myself focused and on track. Last year I realized my priorities had gotten way off track... I would reach the end of each day wondering where my day went. I felt like I was on a treadmill facing a moving target that I could never quite reach.  I decided it was time to pay attention to where my time was going. I decided to track my activity. I tried a couple of different methods. I tried documenting every activity as soon as I finished, but that was time consuming and annoying. I tried documenting my activities at the end of the day, but I couldn't quite remember everything and it was easy to dismiss this or that or the other because it only took a few minutes. I sett...

The view as I return home from a walk. I love to take a walk! Getting outside, feeling the sun, the wind, even the rain on my face lifts my spirits almost every single time. I try to take a walk, even if it's only 10 minutes, at least twice a week. Walking is a simple activity that can do so much for us. There are multiple reasons I take a walk and none of them have a single thing to do with my weight or my appearance. Clear my head. Sometimes when I've been working for hours on multiple projects, a quick walk helps to clear my thoughts. It feels almost like a moving meditation that also gets my heart pumping and my limbs moving. When I'm feeling overwhelmed by everything I need to do in a day, a quick walk often makes that task list seem much less daunting. When I clear my head, it's easier to get back to work. Spend time with a friend. I walk with a friend one day a week, almost every week. After those walks I always feel more connected and more focus...