Editor’s note: this is a guest post by Stephen Watkins of The Undiscovered Author. Whether it’s because you have kids, or a day job, or family crises, or you’re looking for work, or you’ve got a heavy class schedule at school–whatever it is, many of us have a lot of demands on our time, and [...]

Editor’s note: this is a guest post by Emily McGregor,V.P. of Production at Comediva.com. She’s also the awesome person who wrote and directed the following viral video: EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil) is to Rachel Ray as Comedy is to writing. It makes things like lettuce taste like food. It also has been linked to [...]

Editor’s note: this is a guest post by Brandon Monk of Read. Learn. Write. I didn’t come to writing with a natural stride. I came to writing with a broken leg, standing up only with the help of two crutches underneath my arms. My writer’s “leg” had been broken by years of writing for the [...]

Editor’s note: this is a guest post by Lynn Fang of Upcycled Love. We are so inundated with negative information these days that most people just want to numb themselves to the pain. They don’t want to talk about the real issues (they’d much rather keep listening to the new Katy Perry single). Political corruption, crime, [...]

Editor’s note: this is a guest post by Linda Formichelli of The Renegade Writer. If I were to keep a time log of my days, you would probably be horrified. There would be hundreds of entries, as I tend to work on any given project for no more than a few minutes at a time. [...]

Editor’s note: this is a guest post by Cynthia Morris of Original Impulse. The writer looked up, bleary-eyed. The word ‘fin’ was imprinted on his vision. The end. It was done. His second draft. Complete. A giant sigh surged up and whooshed out of him. ‘Ding’ his computer chimed. In his inbox, the world pressed. [...]

Editor’s Note: this is a guest post by a Kathryn Trombly from Just Daily Living. Sometimes the most difficult thing to do in life, is to live exactly where you are, and as who you are today. Growing up no one teaches you how to do that–to just live. No one teaches you how find [...]

When I reflect upon my life, which I am prone to do these days having recently retired after forty-four years in the nursing profession, I realize how grateful I am to have survived so much and still feel positive. Oh I have my questions. I mean, how does a young woman from a stable Christian family go off to make so many hair-brained decisions and end up with two failed marriages–one to an alcoholic and the other to a man who stubbornly refused treatment for his Bipolar Disorder. Bipolar Disorder, if you did not know, is a mood disorder that can be controlled with medications and psychotherapy. Left untreated as his was, the person can display violent and erratic mood swings and behavior, putting himself and those around him at risk.

Hi—I’m J. P. I paint late at night, I have a picture of Neil Armstrong hanging on my wall, and I’ve spent the past year searching for a pair of pants that fit (they don’t seem to make real skinny pants anymore—not the squeeze-you-till-you-suffocate kind, I mean honestly and reasonably skinny). Our gracious host, Ollin, had asked me to write a piece about the importance of randomness. But the more I wrote, the more I realized that sometimes, especially in writing, randomness is not so much a conscious choice as it is a simple sense of observation.