Call to mind a photograph of you as a child that is familiar to you. It may be one that hung on the wall of your home throughout your growing up years or possibly, an image of your young self you’ve recently seen for the first time. How old are you in the photograph? What are you doing? Who else…
As we prepare to close the door on 2012, Christmas, Hanukkah and holidays, what moment from this season will you remember? Is it a happy moment or a sad one? Describe this instance in detail? Who does it involve? Where were you? What happened? What about this moment makes it so memorable? Set your timer for ten minutes. Go. Photo…
What a lovely day on the lake. The Fall 2012 Writing Marathon held on Lake Fairview on Saturday, November 3rd, couldn’t have been more perfect. The weather was ideal, we had a great potluck, and people went out and sat by the lake to write. How inspiring. Throughout our day we used a variety of motivational writing prompts designed to help…
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and you know we have to talk turkey in this week’s Wednesday writing prompt. We could write about how grateful we are for the many blessings we experience each and every day—and I encourage you to do that—but for today’s writing exercise, let’s write about turkey days that didn’t go quite like we expected them to. What…
Last Sunday, a group of sixteen Writing Your Lifers got a taste of what’s to come on the Writing the Waves cruise, which sets sail on Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas on May 12, 2013. We spent time touring the ship and enjoying a wonderful sit-down lunch. Unfortunately, we had to leave at 3:00 p.m. while the other guests…
In last week’s post on Writing with Photographs, we talked about ways to look at photographs—how to systematically examine the photograph’s physical characteristics, inventory the image, listen for the story the picture has to tell and answer the basic who-what-where-when-why-how questions. Now, let’s focus our attention on what to do with the information gleaned from the study of our photographs.…
I like birds. I don’t consider myself a birder, but I do enjoy watching our feathered friends—those that used to hang around the feeder at my old house and the ones that come to visit the lake where I live now. I often observe unusual bird situations like a couple of weeks ago when thirty buzzards spent the afternoon on…
One small step… Last month, we lost an American hero, astronaut Neil Armstrong, commander of Apollo 11, the first man to set foot on the moon, the one who mouthed those iconic words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” What do you remember or have been told about this memorable time on July 20, 1969…
Anyone who talks with me for five minutes knows that I am all about taking the large lives we’ve lived and breaking them into smaller, more manageable pieces, hence the name of my book, Eating an Elephant: Write Your Life One Bite at a Time. But I also believe that we gain great insight and give our stories depth by…
What do you see in this title? A brief description of the writing process? Yes, but what else? All the words end in ing? Right. So, what?I love ing words. They often help create a rhythm and a cadence that is pleasing to my ear. They move my sentences merrily along in a babbling brook sort of way, and they…
