Last week I began a little experiment that I am going to try and keep doing in the new year — an approach to writing more regularly. For whatever reason, I’ve discovered that if I start a habit just before January rolls around, then my New Years Resolution is that much easier to keep, because I’ve already gotten a couple of days (or in this case, weeks) under my belt. So what is this resolution and how will it help me (and you, quite possibly) write more, you may be wondering. I’ve made a decision to do the following: Do one small thing for your art today. That’s it. However you define “small” — whether it’s woodworking or needlepoint, or textiles, ceramics, visual arts, dance, or writing. Just define what “small” is for you, quantify it (so you can remain accountable) and then do it. How small? As small as a marble, that is, small enough that you can accomplish it without thinking twice about it, small enough that it won’t seem like it’s even worth doing because …

This week I’ve been enjoying a lot of reading! My new Kindle Fire (2015 model) arrived last Saturday– a Black Friday deal I picked up to replace my older model which died a couple of weeks ago. This meant, of course, that I spent the majority of the weekend re-downloading all of my favorite apps, books, and music playlists. And because  my desktop is too old to be compatible with Amazon’s music platform, I manually transferred 888 songs and created 60-some odd playlists. Yes, I like my music! Feeling inspired and looking for some new reads, I picked up Driving Mr. Dead by Molly Harper (2012), an amusing paranormal romance with some nice tension about a road trip gone horribly awry. I also read Borderline by Mischell Baker (2016), a weird trip of a contemporary adult fantasy where faeries live in a parallel world to our own and are the muses behind Hollywood greats, told from the perspective of a protagonist suffering from BPD. If that weren’t enough, I also finished my final novel for review …

On Sunday, my family began the holiday pastime of Advent, a liturgical tradition that my Catholic-raised father and Lutheran-raised mother introduced into my childhood and that carried over into my Catholic-Evangelical marriage. The Advent wreath, which is the center of our tradition’s focus, has four candles, each lit on a successive week (until all four are lit at the same time) and a fifth candle in the middle, representative of “the light of God entering the world” through the Nativity. The individual weeks represent: Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. This year, more so than in years past, God has opened my eyes to the pain of my neighbors and to the uncertainty that many Americans are facing every day (myself included). Coming to know the struggles that everyday people are facing, some of them faceless strangers that I could call neighbors by their proximity to where I spend most of my time, well, it’s absolutely heartbreaking. And scary. And it makes me angry too. It doesn’t feel like there’s a whole lot of hope, peace, joy or …

Happy Thanksgiving weekend everybody! This season is always a time for gratitude and for me, I am never more grateful than when I am busily humming along through life with an agenda full of writing tasks to accomplish. Give me a step by step and I will chug along that track, even if they’re still laying each railroad tie in front of me as I go, until I hit Promontory Summit. With plans to see the family this year, I spent my free time working on the final productions of the year — the November and December issues of our guild’s magazine, the monthly newsletter, and a handful of reviews quickly approaching their deadlines. I may have to tidy those up next week, actually… Nothing makes the blood race quite like writing and that sense that any journey is doable, if one can only find the path. Losing the vision under the storms of discouragement, rejection and fear is another way of being derailed from your destination. Sometimes, it feels like you’re spinning your wheels, …

It’s been a quiet week here, mainly just reading. I’m writing in an attempt to honor the weekly reviews that I promised. There’s been no progress to speak of on my own writing although I have been slowly working on coordinating the November and December issues of my guild’s literary magazine, and have attended a NaNoWriMo write-in, which was a lot of fun. This coming week’s goal is to finish all outstanding articles for the year and email them to my (co-)editor(s) for the literary magazine, as well as the historical one that I do reviews for, and all before Thanksgiving which means I need to get my ducks in order. Sterling & Stone had a great webcast this week, talking about “The Value of Deep Thinking”. This is something I wish I had more time for… just thinking (not nodding off, which is usually what happens) and brainstorming ideas. Jeff Goins also talks about having time just to create and fill that well so you have something to draw on when you’re ready to write …