Posts tagged ‘poems’

Feb 13

One tip to tweak your morning routine to become happier and more creative

Recently, I had a major epiphany about how to tweak my morning routine to become more creative, happier, and joyful.

But, first, the morning routine.

I learned a few years ago about the power of having a morning routine in Hal Elrod’s book, “The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM).”

The author writes about the many benefits of a morning routine such as waking up every day with more energy, drive, and structure; lowering stress levels, improving health, increasing productivity, and having more gratitude and less anxiety.

He lists six activities to include in your morning routine that he calls “savers.”

The term SAVERS stands for:

Silence (meditation/prayer)
Affirmations
Visualization
Exercise
Reading
Scribing (journaling)

The idea is to spend the first hour of your day on these items. On those days that you don’t have an hour then you can condense your routine into whatever time you have.

I won’t go into all the details because there are so many great articles on this topic already, including this one by Ricardo Singh, “Miracle Morning routine: 6 steps to boost productivity.”

I don’t do all six items but use them more as a menu to choose from depending on how I feel and what I think I need that morning.

My morning routine is the foundation of my day and without it, I feel lost at sea, afloat on a wave of too many responsibilities and tasks. That time to myself in the morning centers me for the day, and I feel as if time expands for me as a result—not in some woo-woo, supernatural way but because I’m more focused and productive.

So, what’s my epiphany?

May 11

Elevate your prose with poetry techniques

No matter what you write—emails, short stories, novels, or nonfiction—your prose can be more persuasive and impact your reader more effectively by using poetic devices.

Below are three blog posts to help you discover the power of using rhetorical techniques to create more poetic prose.

This Thursday, May 13, I’d love to have you on my webinar Adding Poetry to Your Prose.

You can buy the entire webinar series featuring well-known writers, including Donald Maass, Emma Dryden, and James Scott Bell, or scroll down to May 13 and grab my webinar. If you can’t make it live, you’ll receive the recording and all my handouts afterwards.

I’d love to see you there!

Until then, please enjoy these posts:

Use rhetorical devices to evoke readers’ emotions

Rhetorical devices: Your secret writing weapon

Add alliteration to make your pages pop!

May 22

Add a new dimension to your writing with humor

Let’s face it. This world can be difficult and confusing at times. Writing or doing any art or creative endeavor (even cooking or taking photographs while out walking) can help us figure out the difficult things.

I’ve written before about how writing poetry is like working a puzzle for me. That’s true on another level as well—not just finding the perfect word for a line but also as a way to puzzle out my world.

As a result, some of my poetry can delve into heavier subjects–illness, death, grief, etc.–which is why I love using humor in my writing. A bit of humor can not only serve to give the reader a reprieve, but it can deepen an emotion I want my reader to feel or an insight I want them to have. Humor can also take your reader on a journey they didn’t expect.

Below is an example of using humor in my poem “The Art of Flow” from my poetry book The Dragon & The Dragonfly (I’ve underlined the humorous bits): Read more

Apr 1

9 Comments

How to write from an animal’s point of view

To kick off National Poetry Month, I’m sharing a poem from my poetry book, “The Dragon & The Dragonfly.”

The idea for the poem came from a prompt to write from an animal’s point of view. I’d just read an article about my favorite author Neil Gaiman’s time in Tasmania helping with a documentary on the Tasmanian Cave Spider, so that’s the creature I chose.

How did the poem come together? Read more

Mar 10

1 Comment

Use rhetorical devices to evoke readers’ emotion

My mom loved puzzles. She spent most of my childhood in our little mom amd pop grocery store, and in between ringing up customers, stocking shelves, and keeping me occupied, she loved to work on puzzles. Crosswords. Cryptograms. Hangman. Word search. Maybe this is where my love of words came from.

I never enjoyed puzzles like Mom did, but it dawned on me a few years ago that writing poetry is my form of puzzle work. I enjoy hunting for just the right word. Sometimes I wonder if the joy I feel when a poem finally comes together is what Mom felt when she successfully completed a crossword.

Another part of puzzling together a poem is the fun I have in playing with rhetorical devices. What are rhetorical devices? Read more

Jan 24

Using theme-specific language to relay strong emotions in poetry

Recently, I was notified that my poem “Butterfly House” was awarded Honorable Mention in the 86th Annual Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition. The poem is in my newly released book of poetry, “The Dragon & The Dragonfly” and was one of those poems that came quickly.

I’d decided to celebrate my late husband’s birthday by going to the Butterfly Museum at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. I’d never heard of the museum until the week before when a friend mentioned it. I decided it would be the perfect adventure for the day to honor his transition into his “new” life and to honor my struggle to find my own new life. I say struggle because I wasn’t there yet, but I knew this is what I wanted—to find my way forward.

It was a truly magical experience. At one point, I just stood with my arms outstretched and waited for a butterfly to land on me. Several came and went, but one—a big orange and black monarch—stayed for a while on my hair. Just call me butterfly whisperer. Read more

Jan 3

3 Comments

Why you should overcome the fear of sharing your art

My stomach burns like I just chugged a dregs-of-the-coffee-pot cup of joe that is now eating a hole through my intestines to the center of the earth. Or maybe there’s a mouse on uppers doing a nervous, jittery tango in there. Or maybe both.

Why do I feel this way? Because I’m about to push the “publish” button on my first book of poetry, The Dragon & The Dragonfly.

I’ve been writing poetry off and on for 35 years, published my work in journals, and won numerous awards, so it’s not like I’m a newbie fresh out of school. But the thought of sharing my very personal poetry was making me doubt my decision to create this book, this permanent record of my words, this revealing of my soul.

I think this is a natural feeling shared by most writers and artists. And something that new artists can be especially concerned about—what if Uncle John or Grandma Ellen reads my words?

So how do you get over this fear of exposing too much of yourself? I don’t think you ever do. Any time we put something new out into the world, there’s a certain vulnerability in that but also a sense of freedom. Read more