I loved reading Dani Greer’s " Word " yesterday; it spoke to me on many levels. One thing I particularly liked is that she makes us aware of non-fiction writing we might tend to overlook because it might not be seen as the "real writing." As for my "real writing," like Dani, the number of words I’ve written for any fiction project can be counted on one hand. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing, however. And the writing I have been doing has helped to keep my creativity thrumming while I’m on a fiction writing hiatus ("writer’s block" just sounds so harsh). How has non-fiction writing helped my creativity? I connect with people . Last year, I joined CLMOOC , Connected Learning MOOC - a massively open online collaboration. During one of its cycles, I participated in a postcard exchange where we all sent postcards to random people who signed up for the cycle. I received postcards from the US, Canada, and overseas, and the postcard writ...

Word counts. Fiction writers worry about them, sometimes incessantly. I know I do. Last week, I obsessed over the few words I'd written since NaNoWriMo . None. Not one more word on any of my novel projects. The question is why? When I got to thinking about it, I haven't had a lot of time to write because I've been... writing. But only non-fiction, and that doesn't count. Wait. What? All our words count for something. I'll bet every one of you have written a lot more than you realize. Here's a list of writing projects I've touched in the past year, starting with the Blood-Red Pencil: Blogging Amazon reviews Facebook posts Emails Twitter tweets Book blurbs Biographies Query letters Dedications Obituaries Author notes Lesson plans Reader guides How-tos Thank you notes  Lately, that writing load has increased to include postcards like this: Letters to the editor Letters to Congress Other rants And... I haven't a...