ideas process writing

Improving Your Writing

There are loads of books, blog posts, and web articles about ways to improve your writing. Google just returned 152 million results to the search query “how to improve your writing.” 743,927** of these online articles are listicles: 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Writing – http://www.forbes.com/sites/dailymuse/2012/05/22/5-simple-ways-to-improve-your-writing/ 10 Quick Tips to Improve Your Writing – http://grammar.about.com/od/developingessays/a/quicktips.htm 21 Ways to Improve Your Writing – http://www.writingforward.com/better-writing/improve-your-writing 8 Simple Scientifically Proven Ways to Improve Your Writing – http://www.fastcompany.com/3023616/work-smart/8-simple-scientifically-proven-ways-to-improve-your-writing…

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art family

What to Do with Leftover Yarn

It started with an afghan. A zig-zag afghan in four colors of Bernat yarn. Of course, there was yarn left over. I could not let it go unused. It’s very soft yarn. In fun colors, especially that vibrant green. So, here’s what I did with the leftover vibrant green: But I still had yarn left in blue, gray, and light green. So, here’s how I used that: I knitted a birthday scarf for my son…

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art reading

YOCR #3 – The Artist’s Guide

In continuing my year of creative reading (note the abbreviation in the title), I dipped into Jackie Battenfield’s “The Artist’s Guide.” While I did not read it cover-to-cover, I read several big chunks of it. This is a fabulous reference book for anyone serious about creating their own arts career. It’s the book I wish I’d had in college in the 1980s. Art majors concentrated on their art during my college days; they did not…

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thought fodder

Creating Is Not About the Fame

A quick post today, an article I want to share that discusses writing and fame. It’s by Jeff Goins and appears on Medium, one of my favorite sites for long-form essays. It’s called “The Truth About Going Viral” and is about what happened when one of Jeff’s blog posts unexpectedly went viral. Interesting to note that it went viral a year after he wrote it, showing that some half-forgotten (or fully forgotten) post you wrote…

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art thought fodder writing

Je Suis Charlie

The slaying of twelve people, many of them journalists, at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical French newspaper in Paris, has come as a psychic sucker punch to me this week. It is hard enough for writers and artists to fight the general negativity of society and their own self doubts in order to find their voices and speak their truths within their work. The threat of violence, let alone actual violence, can be…

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