Some people can take a bunch of random ingredients from the pantry and create a delicious meal. I am not one of those people. When I watch the cooking competition show Chopped, in which chefs are given obscure (and sometimes rather icky) ingredients with which to make a gourmet dish,…
This week’s On, In, and Around Mondays is inspired by my trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew my license. Once again, prepositions take center stage. Where are you writing from this week? L. L. Barkat invites you to tell all about it in the post series On,…
This post is a reply to L. L. Barkat’s invitation to On, In, and Around Mondays. She calls us to “write from where you are, telling what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by, . . .) you.” Check out other posts for this week’s On, In, and Around…
You’ve heard it before: Writers write—always. This adage can either inspire or haunt. I think writers find it mostly haunting, for the very thing that writers love is the very thing that we find difficult to do. (Do I hear any amens?) Sometimes we writers need a little nudge. Sometimes…
When was the last time you rested in utter silence—and enjoyed it? Silence is rare in our day. Our media-saturated culture allows us to go from one event and distraction to the next with little silence to be had. Even in our resting, we tend to have background noise to…
Many times I have had the pleasant surprise of experiencing God’s nearness when I haven’t really been looking for Him. He crashes through my toughened senses to capture my attention in some unexpected way—perhaps the way the sun is breaking through the clouds or the way geese land upon the…
The idea for Creative Stretch #2 came about backwards: I found myself inspired by chapter 1 of Luci Shaw’s Breath for the Bones, which resulted in a free-form prose; then I realized it would be a perfect creative stretch example, so I wrote the exercise based on what I already…
Art speaks to each person differently. As the hearer (observer, receiver), I love that. My interpretation, my emotions, my thoughts are my own, never wrong when it comes to hearing what art has to say to me. I lean closer, take more time, giving art time to express itself. But…
Yesterday I had the opportunity to take a long walk home after dropping my car off for service. I deliberately took the scenic route in the hope that I could “see the unseeable” in relation to Creative Stretch #1. Many things captured my attention: squirrels furiously scavenging; the angled sunlight…
Welcome to the first Creative Stretch! Glad you’re here with me to get the artistic juices flowing. For this stretch, let’s consider something Shaw says in the introduction to her book: “Both artist and believer must occupy themselves with seeing what is virtually unseeable, what the earthbound miss . ….
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