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...

We are three days into a month full of late nights, hair pulling, and curses lifted into the sky -- all in the hopes of writing a 50k novel. Ahh, NaNoWriMo, how we love and loathe you so. If ever there was a time when we needed to lather ourselves in love, it's during the month of November. Today, I want to offer you a way to give yourself love each day during NaNoWriMo: the Love-A-Day Notes. I started this little exercise about a week ago to give myself some a.m. love before I started the day. On Sunday, I sat and wrote my seven notes, folded each note, mixed them up, then placed one in each day of the week so that every morning, I would be surprised by which note I received. Make sure to do that throughout NaNoWriMo, too! You only need three items to make your Love-A-Day Notes: 7-Day Pillbox (which you can buy for cheap) 1 pack of Post-its Your favorite pen (or set of pens if you want to be creative and colorful) To help in organizing what you'll write, t...