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I love that story.

I’ve forgotten most of the tai chi I knew but years ago I turned the yoga “Salute to the Sun” sequence into a mediation/affirmation/prayer, and since I started this class I’ve been trying to do that every day or at least several times a week. And I’ve been meditating more. It is helping.

I like reading other people’s writing about their process. I don’t know how many famous authors whose work I LOVE have written that they 1) threw their manuscript away, 2) were convinced it was utter crap and had to be talked out of deleting it off their hard drive or 3) started excited about their manuscript but by the time they finished it…[Read more]

*waves* Cool! Taking classes helps me keep writing.

YES! Exactly, it’s hard to move others “if I’m unwilling to feel it myself.” I know I’m close when a passage I’ve worked on for a long time can still make me cry.

That makes self-care and knowing when *not* to address certain topics really important too. Some days I need to be in denial or at least focus on something that won’t bring me down and…[Read more]

In looking back over my writing I don’t see depression showing up directly as a subject for social consciousness. More subtly, I have a horror story that play upon the distortion of reality that happens when someone is depressed. And how sometimes we are willing to take the vision over reality. The story is about a woman who is a suicide survivor…[Read more]

Hello Everyone.

I thought I’d take a brief moment and introduce myself to the group. My name is Suzanne Paul and I’m a 12- year transplant to Las Vegas, NV after living in Indiana most of my life.

I currently occupy a cubicle full-time, performing auditing functions for a government agency that shall not be named. I have degrees in Acc…[Read more]

Ultimately, you’ll have to find your own patterns. The Hero’s Journey works because it is A way of organizing the scenes and events so that people will recognize it as a story…but also to organize your efforts to produce the work itself. It isn’t just “Hollywood”: you can find it in storytelling all over the world. The “Journey” is just the…[Read more]

Your thoughts are critically important. Just understanding you are not alone can make a huge difference. And everyone’s experience of emotional logjam are different, and can be different from one day to the next. Just grasping that can save you from a sense of hopelessness: you begin to seek wide-spectrum solutions rather than…[Read more]

This subject, how to keep your confidence, is of critical importance. A couple of suggestions:
1) it can hurt to get rejected, but rejection is a necessary part of the process. You’ll need to face this early, and devise a strategy to deal with it.
2) My personal favorite is a “daily ritual” of motion, emotion, and focus. Tai Chi performed for…[Read more]

I hate to say it, but this really seems to be different for everyone.

Personally I only have to deal with situational depression, though this can easily be made worse by a my struggles with anxiety. I have many loved ones in my life struggling with depression and other forms of mental struggles. It is an important and, unfortunately, overlooked…[Read more]