We are made of strong stuff. We will endure. Those are strong, hopeful statements that I hang on to as I'm navigating the current situation with COVID19 and the stay-at-home practices that I need to be very mindful of. I'm in two of those high-risk categories; age and underlying health conditions, so I'm aware of how important it is to stay away from people. This has included avoiding my family, which is the hardest part of all. I love my animals, but living alone can be, well, very lonely. To keep me away from grocery stores, my kids do most of my shopping, and they come occasionally to do a chore that I can't do. Well, actually, I could, but the kids don't want me climbing up a ladder to change furnace filters.  But while they are here, we stay six-feet apart. We don't hug. We're such a demonstrative, hugging family that it feels extremely weird for any of my kids to walk back out the door, and we haven't even touched. Human touch is so imp...

What do you do when you feel like you are "at the end of your rope," with no more to give? Writer and artist Julia Cameron writes in The Artist's Way that each of us has a well or a reservoir of energy and creativity that we are continually drawing from in dealing with the stresses and the demands of our lives. But if we are always taking something out, we will eventually run dry. That's where I have been many times. When I still lived in Washington, after writing my first two novels, intense marketing, traveling, taking care of my home, hubby, and cat, as well as my various writing groups, and completing numerous editing jobs, I suddenly found my well dry. Even though the sun was shining (and that usually gives me lots of energy), I had no energy, no ambition, no creativity and no desire to do anything or go anywhere. So I took an afternoon off, drove to my favorite beach park on Puget Sound and just sat by the water. I watched the seagulls swooping and fighting...

Many years ago, I read a book that reawakened my young dreams of becoming a writer. That book was Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. One of Goldberg’s most effective tools is to “keep your hand moving” when you are in the throes of the creative process. In other words, do not edit as you write. In fact, don’t even think. To people like me who live in our heads too much, this was transformative advice. A few years later, I read another book that transformed my life. It was The Artist's Way , by Julia Cameron. One of Cameron’s most effective tools is “morning pages” in which you start off each morning with a “brain dump” that consists of transferring whatever stuff is moving around your head onto 3 pages of paper, in longhand. I married Goldberg’s and Cameron’s advice, and for about twenty years I have been doing morning pages by keeping my hand moving. I use cheap notebooks and an expensive fountain pen. (Tools are important. Writing is a physical process.) By ...