I love quotes. There are some quotes that I use when I meditate. There are some quotes I post throughout my office as inspiration. And all these quotes, to some extent, help me to understand me--my emotions, hurts, pains, happiness--and make me better. My most favorite quote is one that, literally, fits in EVERY SITUATION IMAGINABLE, and it comes from the late great tennis player and humanitarian, Arthur Ashe: In both a professional and personal manner, this quote wedges in and lifts me from the muck--whether that muck is not writing or living in our current world. image by pexels through pixabay SUD in the Professional For this example, I will use writing, specifically, writing this blog post. Start where you are . I'm in a space of insecurity. I don't know if I can be effective as a writer. If I want to be. If anyone would even care if I was. Lately (and by lately, I mean a really long time), I haven't had the energy or care to write--not in any sig...

An Excerpt from The Life Organizer by Jennifer Louden You observe the world in your own way, a way formed by your biology, life experiences, education, culture, spiritual beliefs, and many other influences. That’s a common enough idea — you observe the world through a lens fashioned from all these facets of you. Yet consider: to observe is to interpret. You literally cannot experience reality as it is, just like you can never see yourself without a mirror. You live in a world first filtered through your brain’s system of sorting, editing, and ordering information and then shaped by your observations. It is a narrative system — information comes in, and your brain sorts it into a story, which is a good thing, since 400 billion bits of information are received by your brain every second. Without this narrative-making brain, you would soon be insane. Creating narratives is how you make sense of things. Everything you experience is the product of this storytelling process; withou...

Use the creative process … to get to know yourself better . -Catie Curtis When we discuss writing, we often talk about the preparation needed to gear us up to write; the important aspects of writing, such as character, plot, dialogue, and scene development; the need to be a good self-editor and to find an even better professional editor; the ins and outs of writing sparkling queries and synopses for agents and publishers; and the ins and outs of going the self-publishing route. In short, we focus on the writing, submitting, and publishing of stories, which is good. We need to talk about these things. We don’t, however, talk much about what we learn about ourselves in the act of writing. And that’s just as important. We are the vessels in which stories flow. If we’re not checking on ourselves, our connection(s) to what we write; our common threads, themes that can be seen within our works; and how what we write might even change us, we may find ourselves churning out the same story w...

Question from a Young Writer: Has writing changed your life in any way? YES . That's the short answer. Here's a longer one. Remember the saying, sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me ? Yeah, I never bought that statement. Words can hurt. But they can also help. And the biggest way writing has changed my life is in providing me a tool to help myself and to help others. Sometimes, that help comes in the form of stories--whether they are stories I use to entertain (books, short stories, etc.) or stories I use to illustrate a point (in essays, articles, letters). In 2005, I had to evacuate from my home in SW Louisiana when Hurricane Rita struck. During my time away with some family and friends in a shelter in Northern Louisiana, I found myself dealing with a lot of racial, geographical, and at time religious conflicts and suffered a lot of inner turmoil because of them. I knew I had to place that turmoil somewhere else so that I could be...