Tina Haapala, Excuse Editor

The Flower on my Pangea Organics business card For an entire decade, a full one-quarter of my life so far, I worked at a manufacturing/distribution company.  The company made stuff and sold stuff. I was perfectly content to support the company with customer service, administration and inventory management throughout that time.  The thought of selling anything, however, made me freeze. Marketing?  Fine. Sharing information in a trade show booth? Fabulous. Asking someone for their money in return for a fine product? I’d rather chew glass and wash it down with turpentine. That’s why I am so amused with my recent choice. I’m an Independent Rep with Pangea Organics skincare. It’s a skincare company focused on healthy solutions from natural, organic sources, so my diversion to the sales aspect would be more like washing a mouthful of chia seeds down with the blended juice of a cucumber, kale, and pineapple. You can read a bit about my decision here , but basically, ...

Today is the last installment of my literary journey through George Carlin's " Last Words ". I expected to get a bit of insight into Carlin's life (I did) and a few laughs (yep!), but I never expected to get such inspiration about writing from this comedian's life story. You never know what will rev up the creative engines! Some Last Words About " Last Words " The Creative Well Doesn't Go Dry "The truth is, I can't run out of ideas--not as long as I keep getting new information and I can keep processing it." --George Carlin You have no choice but to keep filling up your creative well. It may not seem like this is the case, especially when you're struggling to get the words out from the deep recesses of your well, but the ideas are there. The problem is not running out of ideas, but nurturing the ideas that you do have. Allowing yourself to worry that what you are writing now is the last great idea you will ever have will paralyz...

Image: Pixomar / FreeDigitalPhotos.net   We are a week into 2011! How is it going with your resolutions, goals, targets--whatever you call the things tied to the beginning of a New Year that keep you motivated? Of course, I am hoping that your word counts are rich and full--an early springtime of Creativity! But what about those other, non-writing goals? Like staying healthy? Keeping our butts in the chairs, while crucial to our writing, can be detrimental to our "bottom lines." But don't use your love of writing as an excuse to stay unhealthy.* This past holiday season, my husband and I took part in a local contest to see how much weight we could LOSE between December 1 and January 12. I plan to write more about it later in my personal blog , but one thing I've learned is that seemingly impossible obstacles can be overcome if your mindset can change. How else can I explain how my husband (a lover of all things chocolate) has spent the season of cookies and ...

Filomena Scalise / FreeDigitalPhotos.net Fun Fact: The average person has over 1460 dreams a year, according to the backside of one of the pages in my page-a-day calendar. What does this mean for a writer? Morning Pages Many writers are familiar with Julia Cameron 's morning pages , usually a three page free-write to get the creative juices flowing before anything else in your day. When I am in the habit of morning pages, I have the notebook, a pen, and my glasses within stretching distance so I can start writing before I'm entirely awake. You can imagine, some interesting, albeit sloppy, writing finds its way to those college-ruled pages. More often than not, a shadow of a dream is still clouding my mind's eye, so I start to write about the dream. I may go into detail about the dream, telling it like a story. I may only remember fragments of the dream--who was in it, how I felt--so the writing may turn to wondering why that particular scene visited my early morning...

Karl Binder / FreeDigitalPhotos.net While watching an episode of CSI one night, I realized that this kind of storytelling entails using many more elements than you would think. After all, watching TV is a place where you just kind of zone out and have the story thrust upon you, right? All of the hard work needs to be done prior to hitting your cable box, so you don't have to work at all. For example, in this particular scene, the investigators were preparing to 'do their thing' with a car--the plan was to take it apart in order to find evidence. If I would have hit 'mute' right at that time, I would not have felt the gravity of the situation. Without the music, the dialogue, the familiar characters, and the sound effects (you know, as the camera zoomed in at the crucial piece of fuzz stuck on the steering wheel), this scene would have been nothing more than some dude walking around a car with a flashlight. Even if you are not writing a screenplay, you st...

As the Excuse Editor, it's my responsibility to uncover different excuses writers use for missing their writing goals. "Fortunately", I don't have to spend hours researching this topic; most of the material I need is readily available. I just have to look in the mirror... *** For writers, how you decide to tackle your next writing project may depend on the kind of mirror used. The Fun-House Mirror Everything about your writing seems WRONG. Your characters are so thin they could never be mistaken for being truly alive. Your setting is a blur. Your dialogue is fat and rambling. Those finishing touches meant to accessorize and complement are just distracting from your story's true beauty. None of this is what you were expecting to see. Take another look: Just by shifting perspective, the image changes. Turn the mirror to create more depth in your characters. What comes into focus? Were they "thin" because you hadn't given them any subst...

“I've learned that everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.” If everything in our writing happened seamlessly, without struggle or challenges, we'd all be excruciatingly bored. And our writing would be as dull as the safety scissors in kindergarten class. We fantasize about the quiet room to focus on our plots, the pages filled with words ready for the world without as much as a missing comma, the publisher eagerly awaiting your novel with open arms...but if that was a constant reality, what would we be striving for? Each writing project reflects a writer's "because it's there" opportunity. The mountain climber scales a mountain with sheer skill and determination and arrives at the peak, heart pounding with the sense of accomplishment. If the same climber would have just taken the train to the top, he would feel a sense of loss. Yes, either way he gets to experience the beauty of t...