In my Monday feature, “Inspiration Minute,” I’d like to share with you something that has caught my attention or inspired me recently.  Be forewarned, it may take a bit more than a minute!  

If this story about kidney transplants doesn’t inspire you to “pay it forward”, I’m not sure what will.  Check it out, along with the photos of all the members of the chain:  ”60 Lives, 30 Kidneys, All Linked.”  I found the stories of the member of the chain to be fascinating and inspiring.  I hope you do too!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s installment of Inspiration Minute!  Feel free to share it with your friends

After having this happen to me several times, I have finally figured out the steps to leverage my dreams in my writing.  I don’t remember my dreams every morning, but when I do, this is my approach:

1. Upon waking, transcribe the dream from start to finish in as much detail as you can remember.  Describe the settings thoroughly.  Describe the people or “beings” in your dreams with as much detail as possible.  Narrate the action of the dream.  Include all of those fantastic (and embarassing) details that people would never believe.  Also include those details you aren’t sure about, e.g., “I think I might have been flying at this point in the dream, but I’m not sure.” Once you’re sure you’ve captured everything that you remember, …

2. Tuck your description away and forget about it.  How long?  At least a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks.  This allows the dream to fade from your memory so what you’ll be left with is an objective view of the story rather than a jumble of muddled memories.

3. Pull out your transcription when you’re ready and read it all the way through. You’ll probably discover that the fabulous dream that you thought would make a great story is still interesting, but incomplete.  Either the setting and characters are terrific but there’s no plot or vice versa.  Often part of the plot will be very well-formed, but it’s not clear what the main character’s goal is.  Without a goal, your story will fall flat.

4. Identify the gaps in your story and that’s where your writing process will begin. Remember that you don’t need to stay true to the original dream when you’re writing your story.  Change whatever elements you need to in order to create a cogent, compelling story with a beginning, middle and end.

5. Just for fun, you can compare your finished story to the original dream transcription and see what elements you changed.  You won’t want to or need to show anybody the original transcription – tuck it back away for safe keeping

To clarify, I’m not talking about the concept of “lucid dreaming” where you know you’re dreaming and jump into the driver’s seat for your dream.  Some writers have used lucid dreaming to discover new stories and explore their works-in-progress.  This is an advanced technique and not for beginners

If you don’t tend to remember your dreams, then consider keeping a dream journal on your nightstand (this will help with step 1 above!).  The simple intention to remember and transcribe your dreams can sometimes help you remember them better.

And, according to Native American tradition, you could consider investing in a dream catcher (as seen in the photo) which is said to capture the good dreams as they go floating by while you sleep.

So, have you written stories based on or inspired by your dreams?  Please let me know what tips you have!  Sweet dreams!

photo credit

I stuffed my pink gym bag into the locker, slipped the combination lock through the door and paused.  I’m paranoid about forgetting the combination to my lock and always take a moment to recite it to myself before securing the clasp.

It’s getting easier now that my daughter is in school five mornings a week and I can get to the gym more often.  There was a time when weeks, even months, would go by and I had to sit in the locker room trying to remember the combination while I imagined my daughter’s screams echoing through the gym from the nursery room. (Sometimes I wasn’t just imagining them.)

Working out is still hard to get in just the right doses. Work out too much and other areas of your life suffer and you can end up more tired than you started or you can get injured. Work out too little and energy flags, sleep patterns get disrupted and overall health is affected. It’s just like other aspects of our lives.

Quality time with family versus time spent on “personal infrastructure” – i.e., errands and household management.  Quiet time for reflection and creative inspiration versus work time. There are a lot of moving pieces to our lives and it’s difficult at times to get everything in just the right balance.

Sometimes we don’t control some of the moving pieces.  Our work can get too demanding and other areas have to be sacrificed as a result.  Or our personal infrastructure can be overwhelming at times.  But it’s always important to try to bring things back into the right combination over time.  And it’s important to not leave things off balance for so long that you forget what the right combination is.

But there are some things that I never doubt that I have in the right combination.  Like love for my kids.  And the combination that was formed when I married my sweetheart so many years ago.

I remember the combination of the lock, secure the clasp and twist the dial.  I’m off to get in my workout, then cooking one of my husband’s favorite dishes for Valentine’s Day:  Cornish Game Hens.  Let’s just hope it comes with microwave instructions.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Stop by and say ‘hi’, won’t you?

In my Monday feature, “Inspiration Minute,” I’d like to share with you something that has caught my attention or inspired me recently.  Be forewarned, it may take a bit more than a minute!  

By now you all know that I am often inspired by stories in the news.  How would you like a site that has a new picture each day related to some story in the news?  Well, I’ve got one for you.  The Guardian has a feature called “Eyewitness” that has just that.  It’s the inspiration gift that keeps giving – enjoy

I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s installment of Inspiration Minute!  Feel free to share it with your friends

In spite of having an organized to do list (most of the time), I still struggle with completing the tasks on the list. One of my challenges is that with two young children, I am subject to frequent interruptions and my windows of time to tackle my list are relatively small.

“Eat That Frog!”, as the subtitle indicates, contains “21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time.”  The principles themselves are sound and, depending on your situation, can be very useful indeed.  People have a tendency to rely on just a couple of ways to tackle or prioritize their to do lists.  This book provides a large number of other ways to look at your tasks and figure out which ones to do next.

One criticism of this book is that it is too general and doesn’t provide specifics.  One reason that I agree with this criticism is because it lacks concrete examples.  Most of the 21 points are explained pretty well in the few pages allocated to each.  However, providing examples could have really helped to drive the points home and made each of the points more memorable.  There are a handful of anecdotes, but not many.

Another criticism of the book is that it often loops back to advice that sounds suspiciously like “just do it” (sorry, Nike).  If “just do it” was sufficient, then there’d be no need for the book at all.

But there are useful approaches in the book and although you won’t find cutting edge research here, you just may find a few tips to help you to rethink your work.  I’ve listed them all in my organizer and I plan to refer back to them frequently as I re-prioritize my to do list this year.  I’ve also starred the ones that I anticipate using the most.

“Eat That Frog!” is available in e-book, paperback, audio and hardback formats from all major booksellers. 

In my Monday feature, “Inspiration Minute,” I’d like to share with you something that has caught my attention or inspired me recently.  Be forewarned, it may take a bit more than a minute!  

Have you ever been writing a story and had to grapple with how your characters have changed physically over a large span of time?  Or maybe you have memories of photographs taken when you were a child (or when your children were young) and wondered how those photographs would look like now?  Well, Irina Werning had the same curiosity.  She has two fantastic collections {Warning:  Both collections contain a small amount of nudity (NSFW)} of side-by-side “then” and “now” photos:  ”Back to the Future” and “Back to the Future 2“.  I love especially how the photographs were recreated including not just the models themselves but the facial expressions, the backdrop and other details.  If you have more time, her other collections are interesting as well.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s installment of Inspiration Minute!  Feel free to share it with your friends

Then I discovered David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done.”  Surfing the web, you’ll find proponents and detractors of the GTD system.  While reading the book, I found numerous things that didn’t work for me.  But on balance, there were more things that worked for me than didn’t.

For example, some things that didn’t work for me:

• GTD recommends having an extensive tickler system to handle recurring events. Although I have a number of recurring events on my to do list, I found it much easier to simply use recurring events in my to do list software.
• The concept of the “inbox” didn’t work for me.  If something gets stuck in a folder it’s “out of sight, out of mind” for me.  I need to either get something on my to do list right away or make a visible pile that will force me to deal with it in the short term.
• Although the GTD approach does not encourage assigning priorities to tasks, I found that I needed to use both priorities and assigning tasks to specific days.  I had to do this because I cannot operate with a larger, amorphous to do list.  I had major problems choosing the “next” thing on the list to do and I needed for the list itself to tell me what to do next.

And here are some of the key concepts that rang true for me:

In my Monday feature, “Inspiration Minute,” I’d like to share with you something that has caught my attention or inspired me recently.  Be forewarned, it may take a bit more than a minute!  

Last week’s “Inspiration Minute” had to do with patience.  This week’s has to do with thinking outside the box.  We turn to NYC artist Kurt Perschke who has a unique perspective, as outlined in this post from “Jeannie Jeannie.” Here’s hoping that Perschke can give you ideas on how to take a fresh look at your creative work.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s installment of Inspiration Minute!  Feel free to share it with your friends

Welcome to my blog feature – “Three for Thursday.”  You may not see an installment every Thursday, but when I can manage it, I’ll be sharing three cool – er – somethings.

If you missed Digital Book World, I came across several fantastic summaries prepared by attendees (as tweeted by Theresa Meyers). I’m still making my way through them – there’s a wealth of information in here:

• Porter Anderson
• Ron Hogan
• Bob Mayer:  Day 1, Day 2

I’m sure there are other good ones out there – if you find any, please share them in the comments.  Also, be sure to check out the Digital Book World site for much more info.