Artificial intelligence (AI) has been on my mind because as you’re likely aware, the Lensa AI app that creates “magic avatars,” or in other words digital art, went viral and jumped to number one in the Apple App store recently. Not only that, ChatGPT gained more than a million users in five days around the [...]
creativity
I’m working on a novel about a 32-year-old woman who is deeply insecure but tries to mask it with false bravado. She second-guesses every move but tries to hype herself up by saying, “Go me!” and “I got this,” nearly every chance she gets. When I show small snippets of the novel to a [...]
I enrolled in a novel writing class and I confessed to a fellow writer that I feel a lot of pressure to put into practice everything I’m learning. I want my dialogue to conceal and reveal. I want to keep the reader guessing but not withhold too much. I want the plot to be engaging [...]
I am very attached to the fruits of my creative labors. I want my blogposts to become viral. I want the book I write to hit bestseller lists. I have very specific ideas about the trajectory of my creative efforts and boy do I get irritated when my ideas don’t match up with reality. It’s [...]
Sometimes I think the expression, “Don’t just do something, sit there,” was made for me. I’m not prone to inertia and people often describe me as “tenacious” and “hard-working.” That’s true, and it means I have trouble with the reverse: giving up. I don’t know when to let go, not only of people and relationships, [...]
Right now I’m participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which means I’m aiming to write 50,000 words in a month. For the uninitiated, that’s a novel the length of The Great Gatsby. It’s approximately 75 pages single spaced in a word processing document. I’m pretty sure this new novel I’m working on is the [...]
I keep seeing suns everywhere — as a ceramic decoration on the side of a house, on cartoons, cards, etc. The sun is “talking” to me, which makes sense because I keep thinking about shining. What does it mean to shine? Where and how do I shine? Where and how do other people shine? [...]
The other week I turned in an essay for a competition and I felt vaguely guilty about it because none of the ideas were mine. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t pass the ideas off as mine – I cited all my sources and I put quote marks around passages that someone else had written [...]
This past week was stressful and exhausting. I didn’t have the energy to write a new post, but when I searched for one to share again, this one from December 2017 came to mind. Enjoy. I envy other people’s success. Not in a mean or spiteful way – I don’t begrudge people their accolades, I think [...]
I envy other people’s success. Not in a mean or spiteful way – I don’t begrudge people their accolades, I think they deserve them – rather a part of me burns with yearning to have what they have. I’ve tried all the things I can think of to deal with envy – feeling it fully, using [...]
