• eMuse Summer Madness Contest,  Grief,  Personal,  Personal Effects: Dark Art,  Poetry,  writing

    When winning a “Madness” Competition is a good thing

    My posting here on the blog trickled to almost nothing when my Dad died a few months ago. I had no energy for anything and started to wonder if I’d ever find my words again. When words did start to trickle from my pen, they were so dark that I joked to my sister that if the family saw what I was writing they’d have me committed. I wrote my way out of the blues, eventually, and the project that played a big part in helping me get there  won the poetry portion of eMuse’s Summer Madness Contest: We received a number of fantastic submissions. As I read through them…

  • Blogging,  Creativity,  Graphic Design,  Immersive Fiction,  writing

    Writing Outside the Lines

    no_boundaries on Flickr – Photo Sharing! A few years ago, the lead editor of a small magazine asked me to do some graphic layouts that would break the magazine out of it’s design rut.  She pulled a couple of envelopes from the slush pile  — this was a few wheelbarrow-sized loads of manila envelopes, heaped in the middle of the office floor — and said, “Show us what you’ve got.” What I had was no experience in magazine layout. A week later, when the editor called me into a meeting about my submission, her first comment was, “This not what I expected. You didn’t just color outside the lines, you…

  • May Pole,  Personal,  Pole Dance,  Research,  writing

    May Pole Dancing

    You remember the May Pole Dance they taught in grade school. You skip around the pole, weaving in and out with colored ribbons? This ain’t that. [youtube=always] I was doing a little research on the art of pole dancing for a story I’m working on. I thought this looked like fun. The rain has stopped and the sun is out. There’s no wash on the line. Maybe I’ll give it a try. Hopefully the rescue squad is having a slow day and will be available if things don’t work out. Blogged with the Flock Browser