yourpassions.tk

I'd rather read about cooking than actually do it. Cookbooks are like relaxing beach books to me...they transport me to a parallel universe where I have intimate dinner parties featuring sophisticated conversation, rustic red wines and homemade pasta. A light of recognition flashed as I read this passage in a Daily Muse e-mail from Skirt.com . Yes! I too love to read cookbooks. I almost never use them, because I’m more of a right-brain cook, making do with whatever is in the fridge when it’s time to feed faces, but having a solid grounding in exotic recipes gives me new ideas for how to use old ingredients. I’ve been an impulsive cook since since my days as a bride, but my attitude toward cooking has changed considerably over the years. For the first twenty or thirty years, I regarded cooking as a maintenance chore, to be hurried through in minimum time. About twenty years ago I had lunch with a business contact who was old enough to retire and about ready to. I don’t remember he...

I just read a blog post, Learn From Others' Mistakes : What Non-Best-Selling Writers Can Teach You on the Cute Writing creative writing tips blog I’ve recently begun following, and added to the links list. In the spirit of that message, I’m sharing selected humorous bloopers that just arrived in an e-mail. Although a good laugh is as good for your body as your spirit, that's not my primary reason for this list. I’m sharing it because things like this can slip into our writing as easily as speech, and they are easy to overlook when editing. These purportedly are true comments made by sports commentators during the just-concluded Olympics. I'm pretty sure that I've seen most before, but whatever the original source, court-testimony quality validity isn't as important as the message. Dressage commentator : “This is really a lovely horse and I speak from personal experience since I once mounted her mother.” Paul Hamm, Gymnast : “I owe a lot to my parents, especially m...

Fragments of memory shimmer like shards of glass in the sun. How do I make sense of them? How do I glue them together into a coherent vessel of story? Where is the thread of shared meaning? “You remember the time we went to that party at the Myers’ house on the fourth of July?” “No. Who were they?” “You remember — I worked with Jerry in 1978 for a couple of years, and they had those dogs ...” “Oh, yeah. His wife was Marilyn. But I never would have thought of that if you hadn’t mentioned it.” “I still get mad every time I think of the way Max refused to ... ” “Have you ever stopped to think that if he had done things your way, you never would have ...?” “No. I never thought of it that way!” I didn’t play or listen to a particular Kingston Trio album for several years after a high school party one night, where I sat snuggled up with a fellow I’d had my eye on for awhile. Six or seven years later, I found a copy on a clearance table and picked it up for next to nothing. As I listened to “...

Every now and then it’s time to redecorate. When I was younger, I often rearranged the furniture when this urge hit. Today our furniture is more complex and the rooms more limiting, so moving furniture isn’t an option. Not wanting the exertion, disruption or expense of painting walls, I turned to something more manageable: I redid my website. When I set up The Heart and Craft of Life Writing site on sharonlippincott.com , I planned to fill it with downloads, articles on writing, book recommendations, and other useful information. I wanted it to be the premier site for free information and downloads. Alas, I’d fallen far short of that goal. This blog holds what would ordinarily be the articles I’d post there, but it's more than that. Basically, I find web design stressful and had left many aspects of the site “under construction”. The urge to dig in and finish the site's structure came when I discovered that Ritergal’s Story Site, which had been hosted on free space on ThirdAge...

Consider this sentence: Uncle Jake was a handsome man. He married Aunt Zelda when he was twenty-six and worked as a beer distributor all his life. Anyone who knew Uncle Jake would probably agree that he was handsome, but the rest of us have to fill in the blanks with our own idea of what a handsome man looks like. Are we talking Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, or maybe JFK? Was Uncle Jake pale, swarthy, or well-tanned? Big muscles? Tall? Well-dressed? One of the keys to writing vivid descriptions of people is to close your eyes and picture the person standing in front of you. Wrap the person in your thoughts and focus on your feelings as you focus on the image. Scan it for three or four outstanding characteristics, and fix them firmly in mind, then open your eyes and write about what you saw and felt. After doing this exercise, Uncle Jake's description might read like this: Uncle Jake had the bearing of a retired general who would command respect in any setting. He stood ramrod stra...

Photo by Andrew Miesem I often have trouble writing a blog post because my point of view shifts like the surface of the sand under the incoming tide. The sand stays there, but the sand castles built on it during the low tide are gone by the next low tide. In case you wonder what sand castles have to do with blog posts, let me flesh it out: I read voraciously, favoring mystery, memoir, metaphysics and writing instruction. Sometimes I pick up a good novel, a historical work, or a volume of neuroscience discoveries. As I read this material (mostly print volumes, but I do read occasional eBooks, web material, and magazines), I have lots of “Aha” moments that relate to writing. I’m learning to grab my journal to capture these moments, because they tend to be as fleeting and changeable as story ideas. Sometimes I even sit down to write a blog post about one of these flashes of insight. I started such a post yesterday based on my euphoric memory of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Oly...

SARK , poster child for Coloring Outside the Lines and Succulence , has scored another hit, and this time she is squirting her juiciness directly into the souls of life story writers. The lengthy subtitle of her fifteenth volume , Juicy Pens Thirsty Paper , is Gifting the World with Your Words and Stories and Creating the Time and Energy to Actually Do It. In her inimical style, words flow in every color of the rainbow, enhanced with her trademark doodles and fillips, fulfilling the promise of the title. Her Writer’s Manifesto appears on the very first page, showcasing her spirit and serving as an example for writing our own: May words and letters assemble themselves and collect without effort on pages and screens. May I live my life joy-fully and in between and during these times, learning to dance with distractions, being conscious of the ways my writing practice fills my soul. May my writing teach me to leap forth and lead my words to be read when this serves me and others...

My heart goes pitter patter for a few seconds as we walk up to the ticket window at Cedar Point . I know I'm going to have to live up to the commitment I brazenly made in my last post . I can't imagine going on the first ride the fellows select—a pair of yellow towers seemingly seventy stories high that corkscrew straight up, then back down again. The second is just as bad, shooting up straight up a tower, then straight down the other side. On the third coaster of the day, the Magnum XL 2000, I decide to just do it. I don't look at the track. Whatever it is, I'll do it. I settle into the seat next to Tosh, buckle up, and check out the hand grips. “Grandma, I hope you can hang on.” “Hang onto what, my breakfast?” “No. A bar or something,” says this sage eleven-year-old. His concern is touching. “You better believe I'll be hanging on!” I say, reassuring myself as much as him. I do a quick scan for apprehension and feel surprisingly calm. Just then the cars start to mo...