In June I'll be looking at ways to incorporate more writing into my life without infringing on the day job. Because writing is my job I have a certain amount of professional work I have to do every day, and that tends to be in the same universe every year. It's not boring but I do feel like I'm in a rut most of the time. I miss writing for pleasure and in genres other than what I write for work, and I want to do more, especially as we roll into summer this month. I always have more time to write during the summer for some reason, probably because it's too hot to do much else. :) My first idea was to try some writing prompts, which is why I invested in 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts . This book contains 501 prompts and was written by creative writing teacher and author Tarn Wilson , who certainly has the knowledge and experience to help build writing habits. What I liked about the book was the clarity and simplicity of the prompts, which are interesting as w...
My favorite person gave me a Barnes & Noble gift card for Mother's Day, and I finally made the trek to the one in the Villages to use it. This is nice, too, as I'm planning another attempt at a no-spend month in June. Ordinarily I thrift books or buy used from Alibris to save money, so the chance to buy new was a real pleasure. Browsing gave me so insight as to the current state of the fiction market (I used to keep up with it more when I worked for NY.) In regard to reading for pleasure, there aren't a lot of titles on the market that tempt me -- all seem to be uniformly depressing or ultraviolent, two things I do not want in my imagination -- but I was intrigued enough by the flap story descriptions of The Astral Library by Kate Quinn to give it a go. I spent the rest of the gift card on my other loves (crochet, art quilting and cooking) because they were what interested me, not that I needed them. I'll pass the quilting mag along to a friend as I usua...