Write with TLC

  On June 14, I watched The United State of Women Summit livestream, or at least much of it. I picked it up a few hours into it - the downside of living in the Pacific Time Zone.  I was disappointed that I missed the morning sessions focused on violence against women. I was thrilled a few days later when I received an email stating the full program was available to watch - all 11+ hours of it.  At least, I could watch the parts I missed including Vice President Biden's intense and emotional speech, Mariska Hargitay's insightful, heartfelt, and emotional words, and the enthusiasm of so many people coming together to create positive change in our world. As Vice President Biden spoke about his decades of work to eradicate violence against women, tears welled up in my eyes. I thought about all the women I know who've encountered violence in their lives. I thought about my own experiences with violence at various times in my life. I thought about how we write a narra...

Blogger's Block... Is that a thing? Regardless, I think I've had it lately... I've written several posts and discarded them for a variety of reasons. I wrote one post about the advice we hear so often to do things first thing in the morning. That piece of advice grates on me every time I hear it. We all have so many priorities in life, it's impossible to take care of all of them first thing in the morning, and I honestly believe trying to sets us up for failure rather than success. I understand the idea behind the advice, but the practice is ludicrous. Close your eyes and imagine doing every thing you prioritize first thing in the morning. Stressful, huh! I think a far better alternative is to look at your day and space out your priorities at intervals that allow you to give each the attention it deserves. But, that's just me. That post got long and windy and... well, a bit ludicrous, so I deleted it. I also tried to write an open letter to Prince's ...

I read as the featured poet at  Salem Poetry Project  on February 11, 2016. Salem Poetry Project is a weekly poetry reading with a featured poet followed by an open mic that takes place at Frozation Nation in downtown Salem, Oregon. Every event has its own vibe. As a poet sharing my work, it's my responsibility to set a mood that conveys my message while reading my audience's receptivity to the words being shared. I picked out enough poems to read for the requested approximately 25-30 minutes. I read from each of my five published books of poetry as well as a few unpublished poems. The audience remained receptive throughout. The poets who read during the open mic were wonderful. Each brought their own unique attitudes and experiences to the poems they shared. I would encourage anyone in the Salem area who is in the slightest bit interested in poetry to check out Salem Poetry Project.  Poets, Salem Poetry Project is a wonderful event to share your wor...

Somewhere around mid-Spring last year, I began to acknowledge I felt overwhelmed when accessing my creative energy required navigating unexpectedly rough terrain that had once been a joyful jaunt. At first I couldn't see that the problem lay in my support of other people's creativity at the expense of my own. I kept wondering why I had no creative energy left for my work at the end of each day, but it never occurred to me that I was giving it away. After all, we hear all the time that creative energy begets creative energy, so if I was sharing my creative energy with others, I should be increasing my creative energy, right? Somewhere in there, I signed up for Christina Katz's Unwrapping Your Creativity Challenge ( no longer available ) with every intention of participating. S he emailed a challenge each day to those who signed up. I didn't even start the challenge. The emails went into their own special folder on in my Inbox, and I felt guilty each day that I didn...

Inertia... We've all fallen prey to inertia... Recently, I discovered I missed one of Kristin Nador's blog posts, 5 Ways To Get Rid Of Inertia , back in October. As I read through it, I thought about how often the problem isn't the doing, it's the getting started. It's amazing how often just writing that first word seems to create a kinetic energy all its own. The first word is down and then the second and then the third and then... the next thing you know, you have a whole sentence, then a paragraph, then a page, then a chapter, then a book... But it all starts with breaking the inertia. This doesn't just hold true for writing but really for anything we want to do. Hiking a trail starts with one step and then the next and then the next until the movement feels natural and not overwhelming. As we follow the path, we discover new beauty and reawaken our appreciation for the world around us and the fact that our bodies allow us to take these journeys. At...

Todd helping me meditate. Recently, I participated in the latest Deepak Chopra/Oprah Meditation Experience , Become What You Believe. I've enjoyed these experiences in the past because they have the meditation and then probing questions that push me to challenge my preconceptions about myself; however this one annoyed the hell out of me. Every time I got to the questions, I wanted to shout "I am NOT broken, damn it." My answers  became shorter and shorter and felt more and more forced as the experience progressed. I felt like it was trying to force me to be broken when I in no way felt broken. There is so much out there that pushes us to examine what's "broken" about us to fix ourselves, to be better, to fit someone else's definition of how we should live. Frankly, I'm tired of it. It's an old trope and is often, but not always, targeted toward women. Interesting, isn't it? The more equality we seek, the more we're told we nee...

A couple of months ago, a poet friend, Ariel, posted a blog titled Help a Sister Out? in which she inquires whether to continue to submit her work and wait for others to decide if it should be shared with the world or to blog her poems and risk them being ineligible for many traditional publication outlets. She mentioned that she doesn't think she has enough credits to start publishing chapbooks. I started to respond but decided to give it some thought first. Over the intervening weeks, I've given her query quite a bit of thought. In answer to her quandary, I'm going to share a bit about my writing journey. When I decided to take my writing career into my own hands, I knew the risk I was taking. I really did; however, I wanted my career to be my own. My message was more important to me than fame. Staying true to my vision was more important to me than bestseller lists. Frankly, I'd rather share my work with people than struggle to impress the gatekeepers. ...