yourpassions.tk

I recently made a startling discovery: I still have a write hand. As I mentioned in the last post , I’ve begun working through Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way . Julia is adamant about the value of applying words directly to paper with digital dexterity. For at least a couple of years, this need to wrap my fingers around a stick full of ink has deterred me from setting out on this adventure. I spend so much time sitting at the keyboard that I’d become convinced my brain had a direct connection to my fingertips only when they were spread horizontally. Furthermore, I’d become convinced that my writing muscles had atrophied. The good news is that those muscles endure. Perhaps they were a bit out of trim, but they have sprung back remarkably well. Like so many other things, it's rather like riding a bicycle. As I consider the situation, two things have eased this transition back into penmanship. The first is using a mechanical pencil or gel pen. It doesn’t matter which. Each glid...

This is my second attempt at writing a blog post today. I intended to write about the insight I discovered as I wrote my Morning Pages . But as I began writing about “wild writing” or writing as a child does, I got sidetracked into a dissertation on Julia Cameron , originator of the Morning Pages process, and that spun off into a long list of her books. Before long I had filled a page with blather that wouldn’t do Julia credit even as a catalog page and I had barely touched on the idea of ... I’d lost track of what I set out to do. I remembered wild writing and tried to get back to that, but the moment was lost. Anyone who writes life stories is bound to run into this same problem. You begin writing about an event in your life, or a memory, and instead of talking about the taste of the turkey and what it meant to you, you’ve filled pages with descriptions of the family china, how Uncle Mark twitched his mustache when he laughed. and how that rotten cousin Tommy always set you up to g...

We’ve all read PDF files — you know, all those free eBooks, instruction manuals, reports and brochures that open in Adobe Reader. For several years the only way to create files like this was to use Adobe Acrobat, and that is indeed a high end product. The latest version of their “standard” version costs half as much as a new computer. Forget Adobe. Anyone can make PDF files now by downloading software that is absolutely free. I tried half a dozen free programs, and PrimoPDF stands head and shoulders above the pack. It’s the only completely free program I found that gives you the option of selecting your desired degree of compression and adding security settings. Whether you use PrimoPDF or something else, it serves as a virtual printer. You “print” pdf files rather than exporting them, and you can print to PDF from any program that uses a printer, not just word processing programs. If you need to edit a PDF file, you edit the source document, then reprint it, as you would with a pape...

Last week I read Linda Ellerbee ’s latest memoir, Take Big Bites . I loved this book and found much to think about, starting with the story she relates in the first chapter about Frito Pie. I sat up and saluted that story. The chile-onion-garlicy aroma of Frito Pie still hung in the air and the taste lingered on my lips as I read. I’ve been making Frito Pie for twenty years, though I had no idea what it was. I got the recipe from my grandmother, who lived in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and the title on it was Chile Chip Casserole . Her eccentric concoctions were legendary. I assumed this was another one of them, though it seemed less bizarre than usual for her, and she seldom wrote recipes down. I assumed she had made it up, because when I was growing up in New Mexico, Mexican food was a staple in our family’s diet. Although we generally stuck to the traditional New Mexico red chile and cheese stacked enchiladas or rolled tacos, we did innovate in later years. Perhaps I’ve innovated the ...

There is good news for anyone who would like to hang out with other people who write life stories, memoir, journals, personal essays, or other forms of recording their lives in writing. Whatever your reason for writing about your life, the newly formed Life Writers Forum is a great place to ask questions, share thoughts, post short stories or excerpts from longer works, and generally shoot the breeze about writing. I am hosting this new YahooGroup together with Jerry Waxler, author of the Memory Writers Network blog . Jerry and I have started Life Writers Forum because there is no similar gathering place in Cyberspace for those who are involved with life writing. With people getting busier than ever and energy costs soaring, the time is right for joining something you can squeeze into your already tight schedules any time you have a few minutes. You don't have to drive to any meetings, and best of all, there are no membership fees. Whether you are still wondering about the diffe...

About twenty-five years ago I had the privilege of attending a two-day management training seminar conducted by Helen Reynolds, a noted author and speaker of the time who specialized in helping women develop their leadership skills. This lively grandmother refused to carry anything but a toothbrush and wallet aboard a plane, and she spent the first day clad in her elegant raincoat, asking questions and lecturing off-the-cuff while she waited for the arrival of her lost suitcase and her brain-in-a-box: a steamer trunk full of immaculately organized overhead slides. On day two, she seemingly pulled overheads forth at random as the conversation continued. Somehow this casual approach worked to inspire, instruct, and generate four-star evaluations. Aside from my astonishment at the success of her apparent lack of organization , I remember only one thing — a story she told. “All I know about life, is that at times it is compact and tidy,” she said, holding an imaginary globe just a little b...

“Tag! You're it!” Remember playing tag when you were young? Sometimes we played on the school playground, but more often we played with the neighbor kids. When we first moved to Los Alamos, our house was on a mesa top two lots deep, with a steep grassy slope down to the street. The front yards didn't have much flat space, so the game got interesting as we scrambled up and down the slope in chase or eluding pursuit. I don't even remember all the varieties. I just remember plain old tag and freeze tag, and the details of the latter elude me. All these years later, I've discovered that the blogging community plays tag too, and the playing field may be as narrow and sloping as the one on Walnut Street. Pat from Pat's Place tagged me in a game of Name Your Quirks tag. According to the rules, I'm supposed to Link to the person who tagged me. Mention the rules in my blog. Talk about six unspectacular quirks of mine. Tag a new set of six bloggers by linking to them. W...