There was a time when I felt that books could change the world. Indeed, books have had a great impact on world culture and society, but often not in the ways that immediately impact what they were intended to when they were first written. Of course, few authors ever gain any sort of significant celebrity.…

I’m quite fond of this quote from American journalist Bill Moyers: “Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.” No matter how mundane something may at first appear, creative efforts can find ways to make it not only interesting, but marvelous! How’s this done?Let’s explore how creativity can transform even the most ordinary aspects…

What do you believe it means to be humble? I’ve always believed “humble” means being modest and respectful to others without trying to impose one’s own world views and opinions on others. But, whereas it seems many people seem to think that to be humble means always being self-effacing or submissive, I don’t think that’s…

I’ve long suffered with the fear of not being well-received as a writer. It’s the kind of dreaded existential terror that haunts a prolific writer’s nightmares. As I noticed my writing becoming denser and more convoluted, I worried I’d eventually reach a point where the only person who could decipher my prose would be me.…

Today as I write this, my connection to the Information Superhighway has been severed for several hours. So, my full attention turned inward on myself, leading to massive overload. For months, I’ve busied myself reexamining various aspects of existence to the extremes. In between my intense studies, if I don’t find some external stimuli to…

I’ve long seen myself as a hapless dreamer, stuck in a world full of seeming coincidences. Everyone is whining and wallowing in self-pity, making up all sorts of excuses instead of trying to better themselves. After all, it’s easy to get caught up in the rat race, running from one thing to the next, thinking…

I never wanted to write what everyone else wrote. No, I needed to express the topics everyone thinks about at one time or another, but I have neither the words to describe nor the guts to relate. Yet, as a writer, lately I’ve reduced myself to revisiting past scribblings of topical articles, delving deep into…

One morning, I woke up with the strangest plot for a story that I believe I have ever imagined. The scary part is that as I worked through it in my head while washing dishes, the plot came together and the characters began to come to life. The setting was unsettlingly different – in a…

There are so many things that I simply don’t remember well. For whatever reason, there are a lot of good memories that I try to recall, but I can’t recall certain details. It drives me crazy. The bad stuff always sticks more in your memory than the good. I’ve always hated that bit about the…

As I dabble in photography, my main focus is to tell a story within a framework. In photos, location is key, as is the center of the frame, even if the subject is not at first obvious by staring straight at the middle. For me, the subject of a photo is not so much as…