On Kathryn Craft’s blog post, 5 Things Readers Want from Novelists on Social Media on the Writers in the Storm blog, she relays five ways that novelists can engage readers with their online media. She (1) wants to be entertained, (2) be challenged to think for herself (3) be exposed to the new and different (4) receive news updates related to new books and career milestones, and finally (5) she wants the writer to give her hope. She does not want to hear the negativity of the book world, she wants to be lifted out of the rabbit holes that life often gives us.

Searching to perfect my my writing voice.

Instead of writing about writing, I want to write about things that people other than writers can identify with. Click here to read rest of blog post

One of the biggest reasons that a writer gets writer’s block is because what he or she is doing seems more like work than it does like play. Playing brings out the creativeness that we have within us. The mental critic that each of us has needs to be made to realize that during the creative process, he or she (mine is a he) doesn’t have a say. However, there does come a time when he can come out and work, throwing away the mess that the muse has created and sanding and painting and detailing the work that the muse had started.

Entertaining my muse is just going with the flow. What happen, happens.

This picture that I have of this interplay between the muse and the critic would make a good hub. The muse is a child who is playing. A muse can be male or female. My muse is female. She likes to make messes. She likes to play and create problems. She plays with abandon. She throws things together and mixed things together that have never been mixed before. She likes to cut with scissors and ball up paper and splash on paint willy-nilly.  She likes to look at something that seems ordinary and makes it look special. She takes the block of wood and turns it into a work of art. She likes to take thread and create tapestry. She likes to slap on the paint and calls it art.

My internal critic cleans up what the muse’s play has messed up. Without the muse however, there’s nothing there for the critic to clean up and detail

When the muse is done making the mess . . . Click here to read the rest of the post