When darkness births a flame
“When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid. The new dawn balloons as we free it. For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.“ – “The Hill […]
Tag: writing
The sweaty, weepy work of a writer
The writer’s life is said to be lonely. Isolating. Somewhat intrepid. Alone with your thoughts and the voices in your head, shouting to be heard. Recorded. Eternalized. While I have had my share of loneliness throughout my career, I have discovered over the years that […]
Mystery Unfolding
Wouldn’t life be grand if only it would work out according to plan — I mean our plan. You know the one. All neatly folded and earmarked and tagged with colorful sticky notes that indicate the direction, timing and course of All Things. And then […]
Done, Not Perfect
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” — Maya Angelou Beloved creativity. It can be an angel or a monster. It can haunt dreams – and fulfill them too. Many of my friends are what I term “Creatives”. They see […]
Freelance Nation
Freelancer, diversified worker, temporary agent — I prefer the term independent contractor. It sounds more serious. More stabile. More delivering. Whatever you call those of us who work on our own without the safety net of an employer paying our health insurance or days off, […]
The Death of an Icon
“Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God.” – Maya Angelou’s final tweet, May 23, 2014 Maya Angelou has died. Her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings haunted me in college and I continued to follow her […]
One Word at a Time
Several years ago I attended a seminar near Amsterdam. I set out to answer what was next in my life. After a full day of Dutch and English discussion, I was no wiser about what I wanted than when the day began. Or so I […]
Creators of the Storyline
The life of a writer can be extremely isolating, insular, yet vast and full. We think, we observe, we hear, we write. We live off the hope that a reader’s life will be changed by what we say. Stories live inside our heads, begging to […]
Trust the Process
When people ask me how I managed to survive writing a book about Slow, I often say it was as if the messages were being delivered by angels’ hands. I was so attuned to the subject matter, the book literally wrote itself. I merely was […]
The Possibility in Imperfection
The other night I attended a Twitter party. For those of you unfamiliar with such things, it is a gathering on the microblogging social media platform Twitter to discuss a particular topic. This time we were a group of bloggers that convened on Twitter using […]