Over the past few weeks, I’ve been playing around with flash fiction and its subgenre micro fiction as a way of trying to crystallize my writing. One tangible result is this story, “Lunch break.”
Wouldn’t you know it: two days after telling you that I seldom use the exclamation point, it makes an appearance in the title of a post for the second time in a row.
Its presence is deserved, I think, to help convey the joy of getting published less than a month into this new leg of my writing journey.
“Lunch Break,” a bit of micro fiction I submitted to the website Paragraph Planet, is today’s featured story on the site. Huzzah!
Continue reading “Published!”My journaling routine begins early in the morning. Writing longhand in a notebook is one of the first tasks of my day.
As a follow up to my recent post about confronting the blank page (or blank screen), I wanted to describe my writing routine and, I hope, prompt some of you to share yours in the comments.
But first, a short back story:
Once upon a time I journaled consistently. Then I fell out of the habit. I don’t know why. Got busy, I guess.
Continue reading “My writing routine”How much should you write in one sitting? And for how long? These are questions that nag at me daily.
Once we’ve embraced the idea of beginner’s mind and have opened ourselves to the limitless possibilities before us, it’s time to get down to the act of writing itself.
It’s time to begin. And sometimes, that’s the hardest part of the writer’s experience.
Sometimes, despite our best intentions and efforts, we freeze before the blank page or screen before us. Where to begin? How to start? How to conquer the tyranny of the blank page?
Continue reading “The tyranny of the blank page”Perhaps for the writer, beginner’s mind can begin with the notion of writing as a journey, an exploration with no specific destination in mind.
As I explore what it means to be a writer, I find myself trying to emerge from a culture that glamorizes the expert, the thought leader, the social media influencer, the advisor, the guru.
It seems I’ll be forever emerging and never emerged, for this culture is like an oozy swamp that seems inseparable from modern consumerist society.
Continue reading “Beginning again”
