I credit the Enneagram with teaching me a new possibility for moving gracefully through a potentially painful transition.  read more »

It seems like an annual, national delusion - what makes us think that we’re going to succeed in making a resolution work THIS year, when we’ve abandoned them in every other instance?  read more »

 Most of us are so accustomed to fast forwarding past discomfort into new activity that the moment of discomfort may not even reach our conscious awareness.  read more »

People are numb because they have trained themselves not to feel, often for very good reasons, the ache of living, and they are numb because they have no language for what they are experiencing.  read more »

Ka-boom!  Now we’re in the landscape of the traditional novel writing process, creating scenes and identifying protagonist and antagonist, helpers and obstacles, motivating actions, coincidences, and catastrophes.  read more »

What I want to say, loud and clear, is that you must find your way through the mire of advice and head-nodding, the certainty that others will have about what is essentially one of the most personal processes on the planet.  Your novel can only come about when you make the commitment to yourself to be true to your process, your characters, and the aliveness of your dream.  read more »

Long before the American economy went into its current version of freefall, I’d taken to wondering how you could run a country on…shopping. That sounds nuts and like over-simplification at best but this has become the opinion of many smart, in-the-know, best-and-the-brightest as to what has gotten us into this mess.  read more »

These days, it seems that contemporary literary culture celebrates the precocious achievements of gifted youth more often than seasoned later-in-life talents. I wonder, instead, if it isn’t a better idea to see creativity and art as part of the flow of life and our lives?  read more »