Write when you're angry. Cook up ideas in a room with blue walls.  These and other strategies from Imagine: How Creativity Works are simple and usable.  And did you know that just before your new idea or connection becomes conscious, the crackle of recognition can actually be observed in the brain by a technique using fMRI and EEG?  Cool! […] Read More

I was suffering a touch of hostess anxiety one day recently while trying to civilize our house for the arrival of guests. A business acquaintance I saw that day interrupted our conversation to take a phone call.  "Sorry," she said, when she hung up.  "I had to take that…." Turned out that her 17 year-old son had gone […] Read More

  Late last night, after hours at home, my husband Bob pushed aside the edge of a curtain to turn off an outdoor light and found the view blocked by a close-up of branches and leaves.  All he said to me, flopped on the sofa a few feet away, was, "Come over here."  But there was […] Read More

A lengthy series of personal pieces on anxiety is running on The New York Times online-only Opinionator.  The most recent "America the Anxious" is quite funny, others more serious.  I felt a kinship with this writer, Diana Spechler: "For more than four years — ever since graduation had dumped me into adulthood — I’d been […] Read More

The New Yorker first alerted me to this wondrous book, The Tools.  It's by a pair of psychotherapists, both of whom wanted to be able to give clients  immediately usable, effective tactics for dealing better with life.  It's based on using your sticky situations as a cue/springboard to big leaps forward. The subtitle is: Transform Your […] Read More

      Yesterday I went scary-red.  It's something I'd been thinking about for 49 years.  But I kept waiting to get a lot of gray first, thinking I wouldn't start tinting until I needed to.  Wasn't happening.  Very very serious wrinkles happening but hardly any gray.  So in continuing celebration of the upcoming release of my […] Read More

  During the several years I've been working on my coming-out-next-year novel COBALT BLUE, I've been collecting items to wear to celebrate.  This dress is from a thrift shop near the causeway between mainland San Diego and Coronado Island.  The glasses — and you can just imagine my delight at finding them — are from the […] Read More

For readers and writers interested in pushing beyond some genre boundaries, a new group has formed.  A much-needed one, I think. If you've ever gone looking for a novel that extends the edges of currently visible reality — but isn't exactly sci-fi or fantasy or magical realism — you probably know that there's no particular place to look […] Read More

First let me say that this is not me.  When I tried it, I rocketed straight toward shore, didn't try to "get into the curl;" it almost seemed as if the shore was instead speeding toward me. The sport is surf mat riding, which might bring to mind the familiar flimsy pool toys.  This is a […] Read More

 Going to sea, or at least paddling around on Jordan Lake, has long been a good problem-solver for me.  As I've often written about here, a major turning point in my writing occurred on board the Queen Elizabeth 2 about 15 years ago.  It led to the revision and quick sale of my long-in-progress novel […] Read More