Warmsprings Ridge Freelance Writer

Warmsprings Ridge Freelance Writer Freelance writer for magazines, businesses, and non-profits; aspiring novelist; lover of mountains, Pieces of those are gradually showing up on the page.

I focus my writing for businesses and non-profits on case studies (success stories.) And, like many of my friends, I have several novels swimming around in my head. My poems have been published in Cicada for Teens. I write poetry when lines begin dancing their way from muse to hand, though I have methods of enticing that elusive scamp to sit on my shoulder and speak. Everything else is primarily a matter of butt-in-chair.

10/06/2018

I like to say that I never chose writing — it chose me. From the time I was 9 years old, I wrote stories profusely, almost never with the ending in mind, or even the basic roadmap of where I was going — just writing the scenes as they played out in my head moments ahead of time. As I grew older,...

01/03/2018

From Avatar to The Wizard of Oz, Aristotle to Shakespeare, there’s one clear form that dramatic storytelling has followed since its inception.

01/03/2018

Get lost in a good book. Time and again, reading has been shown to make us healthier, smarter, and more empathic.

12/31/2017

What is the relationship between storytelling and the brain? Stories, defined as having a beginning, middle, and end and endeavoring to wrest some sort of meaning from experience, are universal across all cultures and through all known history. [...]

10/22/2017

How long should a chapter be? Discover the sweet spot for your chapter's word count in this post featuring J.K. Rowling, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Henry James.

Oh, my gosh. As someone who really DOES love lizards - especially a certain little Dragon who looks a lot like this igua...
06/23/2017

Oh, my gosh. As someone who really DOES love lizards - especially a certain little Dragon who looks a lot like this iguana, and who is my muse - this video was TERRIFYING. I had to stop looking at one point. I'm sure that my daughter, in her room trying to nap (third trimester exhaustion) wondered what the hell I was screaming about.

But yeah, this is a better primer about what story structure should be than any number of books about story/scene beats, action - reaction sequences, scene setup, deepening, objectives, obstacles, outcomes, etc., which mostly just make me want to pull my hair out. I'm learning to trust that as a voracious reader for 52 years, I have a pretty good intuition for how a story should flow, and that what I get wrong can be fixed in ensuing drafts. But if I need a reminder of the basic structural elements, this video is a good one. Though I doubt I can bring myself to watch it again.

My guru, my iguana.

04/12/2017

I've always written free verse. This is the first time I've tried form poetry of any kind. Not quite true: I once got a few lines and several hours into a sestina before giving up. But finally, today, a peace, love, and harmony (!) Shakespearean sonnet - a full draft. And I now have 1000% more respect for those classic poets who wrote in strictly metered and rhymed forms every day. It's damned hard.

Whirling

My DNA is what it had to be.
My parents' genes determined that whorled code.
But life's mad whims revised the pre-set key,
and karmic faults point where my soul must go.

It seems that I must march long miles in shoes
of someone in some lifetime I once slurred,
a soul whose lack of energy accused
as "lazy," one whose scourge I now endure.

Please, universe, allow us to remain
upon this earth when finally we've found
unbolted access to nirvana's gate,
compassion, peace, and love in all conjoined.

Through whirls of genes and chaos we're all sent
until we learn each lesson. And repent.

04/06/2017

Day 6 of Poem-a-Day, and I've finally managed to pin one down, more or less. Still draft form, but I'm calling it close-enough-for-now.

Pillow Talk

In the middle of the night
I curl and straighten, angle my
pillow this way and
that, but my heart still thunders blood
through wide-open veins, amplified by
futon, and into my ear.

“You’re a-LIVE, you’re a-LIVE, you’re a-LIVE,”
it shouts.
No sweet-nothing whispers from this whooshing muscle.
“Wasting TIME, wasting TIME, wasting TIME,”
it argues.
“Stay a-WAKE, stay a-WAKE, stay a-WAKE,”
it insists.

My heart, that tyrant, that
truthteller
its timing forever
inverted.

03/29/2017

“A poem … is when you are in love and have the sky in your mouth.”

07/12/2016

Author Barbara Baig discusses the idea of deliberate practice from Anders Ericsson's book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise.

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