I don’t plot. I don’t outline. I don’t even do character sketches. I know, I know … I’ve tried, I really have. Every time I try, I freeze and lose the spark for the story. Here’s the irony, I’m a planner—not just any planner--a neurotically compulsive planner. I’ve never met a project, a trip, a […]

Scott Wilbanks You know you must be desperate when you find yourself Googling random word combinations in the hope that a book title will magically make itself known to you. To be honest, after a week  and an endless series of, “that’s good, but no thanks”, responses from my publishing house, I was grasping at […]

I am not an old soul. I am a klutz and a fairly slow learner. I bumble through life, making almost every mistake possible before finding the right way.  People (most notably, my long-suffering parents) tried to explain things to me. But that’s apparently not how I learn. And I don’t think I’m alone. This […]

Kathryn Craft Turning Whine Into Gold To embrace paradox we must hold two seemingly conflicting concepts as equally true. Wisdom literature is rife with paradox, suggesting that we receive through giving, gain through losing, and live through dying. “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it,” said Mahatma […]

by Kimberly Brock A few weeks ago I was heading to Cashiers, North Carolina for what was heralded as the answer to my recent writer’s weariness. I’d been driving for several hours, twisting up winding roads where the earth falls away into deep gullies and the air grows thin and the mountain walls weep. I […]