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A writer’s life is an endless collection of bits and bobs, odds and ends, and other assorted nonsense that don’t quite fit together. It’s like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle where the picture on the box keeps changing, then some sadist throws in a handful of pieces from another puzzle just to keep things…
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Despite having written hundreds of poems, over the past decade I’ve kept poetry at arm’s length. It’s still within my reach, should I choose to try writing verse again. But without the benefit of daily practice, I haven’t been able to return to the craft with much enthusiasm. I’ve long reserved poetry as a means…
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I awoke at midnight from a nightmare monochrome world entirely drained of color, my identity violently stripped away by some unseen force. When I finally awoke from this overwhelming level of fright, I found myself gasping for air. After I finally found my breath, it occurred to me that this was not simply a nightmare…
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Since stepping into the unpredictable world of freelance creativity, my most vital mission has been to help others expand their intellectual and imaginative horizons. But I don’t want to try doing so through the hollow cheerleading I’ve seen from so many other well-meaning scribes. I’d rather light the way forward through sharing my own endless…
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You may not think your own life story is all that interesting. But, what matters most in storytelling is how your story is told. It’s not so much the content, but rather the presentation. The point of view is also key. Both biographical and autobiographical stories are told with some inherent bias or deficiency on…
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Once, I wandered a crooked path through the twilight of mediocrity. It wasn’t a choice I made myself, but seemingly one that I inherited as a member of a lower middle-class family. My station in life seemed signed, sealed, and delivered, then neatly folded into a filing cabinet beside the birth certificate that called me…
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It’s been said many times that the blank page is like a canvas. Frankly, a blank page is much more like a desert. It can be the most dreaded thing for any writer to face, being vast, empty, and seemingly infinite. Ironically, it’s what a writer faces all the time. When you set yourself to…
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Today’s educational paradigm of oversimplification has caused intellectuals such as me a great deal of grief. The lure of simplicity is the crux upon which knowledge today is distilled down to a palatable elixir. But to take simplification to the extent of pacifying the lowest common denominator is a panacea we guzzle down without pausing…
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I grew up in the golden age of blogging, that glorious time when you could scribble a few thoughts on the internet, hit ‘publish,’ and suddenly find yourself the authority on just about anything you please. Yeah, I remember those days fondly. Back then, the most intense competition was between you and that one overly…
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Every so often, we find ourselves at moments of sudden clarity. Unfortunately, most of us dismiss them either out of being distracted by things of the moment, or as inconvenient truths we would prefer to ignore. For whatever reason, I find these moments come at almost regular intervals. I believe this is only because I…