#Fiction
Writing Outside (Your Comfort Zone)
So I love to write outside. 
It’s one of my favorite things to do. 
But outside my comfort zone? Not so much.
However, in the last year or two, I’ve been having stories come to me that don’t fit into a poem or picture book.
They insist on being (gasp) novels. Now, I love novels, but I have never believed I was equipped to write one.
I mean, I’m a short form gal. Yet those stories keep showing up at my doorstep, and I don’t have the heart to turn them away. 
So, for now, I’m going to the Little Red Writing Desk, and putting what I know into a notebook. Actually two notebooks. Because the ideas are growing. Somehow, it seems safer to scribble in a notebook than to sit down at the computer and type CHAPTER ONE. Now that’s terrifying for us short form folks. But messing about in a notebook…it’s as easy as journaling. No expectations at all at this stage except to get the ideas down and see what happens.
Maybe you have an idea outside your comfort zone too. Feel free to share! Remember we’re in this together.
HINT OF THE DAY: If you have a project that takes you outside of your comfort zone, approach it in a different way than you normally would. If you usually write at a computer, try a notebook.
If you most often write on lined paper, try the wide open blank page. If you never draw what you are thinking, sketch out your rough ideas this time.
Speak up:
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#Fiction, creativity, Writing, writing lifeWho I am
Athens Library Author Fair
As part of The Lamplighter 2015 Artist Writer Mashup, I have been asked to answer a few questions about myself:
Who are you?
What experience do you have writing?
How did you find Lamplighter?
What do you expect to accomplish while participating in the project?
Speak up:
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#AWM2015, #Fiction, #NaPoMo2015, #Nonfiction, Lauren Clarke, Patrick Doyle, Poetry, Solstice MFA Program, Women writers, Writing, writing lifeWhy I Am Not an Artist (What?!?)
I’ve been missing from this site all winter. I did so well last year, posting once a month, but the cold, dreary months did me in. I spent much of January, February, and March huddled under blankets on the couch, upstairs in my bed, or at my desk working on poetry projects (with gloves). But the birds are singing spring and those poetry projects are out in the world trying to find a larger audience, and April is the time each year when I begin new things, when the creative juices for new projects begin to flow.