The Write Focus

When we live our life in the present, being in the moment, we can develop a love-hate relationship with people and things we encounter daily.

We don’t “love to hate” these; we love them at some times…

“Share your innermost life,” marketing gurus advise writers, “with your readers, your newsletter folks, with everyone. Make it all public Make it pop-ular.”

That’s a certain way to burn out most of y…

Monsters of all sorts inhabit literature, for they crowd into people’s consciousness whenever we face trials and tribulations.

The unnatural monsters, goy and terrifying, gorging themselves without m…

Love. Betrayal. Death. Those subjects we discussed in our story-song and in other recent poems, including Christina Rossetti’s particular version of false love and twisted betrayal—Lust that isn’t lo…

October is a month of changes, of transitions, anticipation of the colors even as summer gives us a few reminders of his warmth.

And October ends with All Hallow’s Eve, the evening before a holy day …

We have a theme of Dances of October for this episode ~ although one of our two poems doesn’t mention dancing and the other doesn’t mention October. How are we connecting these two works to that them…

The highbrow puzzles of e.e. cummings or the imagism of Ezra Pound. The lyrical music of John Keats or Christina Rossetti. The logical jumps and intellectual gymnastics …

Wine is heady stuff. A simple goblet of wine relaxes us; a mega-pint or a bottle can tip us into trouble.

Do you prefer the creamy full-body of a fine cabernet or the bite of a sauvignon blanc? Perha…

Hi all. It’s the third episode in our autumn series Fall Into Poetry. We’ve featured two story-songs (narrative poems) that are…

Story-songs, like last episode’s “Read my Mind” by Gordon Lightfoot, leave a mark in our memories. Very little is needed to return them to the foreground of our mind.

That’s also the case with this e…

Every writer is after memorable writing, whatever will strengthen our words and ideas so they haunt our audience.

We want our audience to return again and again to our writing, either to recapture th…

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the fourth check-in for the Word Count Challenge with the theme of Surviving that Horrible Week for Writing.

I thought I was smart, earlier in this year, when I scheduled a W…

Hello, everyone. It’s the 3rd Check-in for the Word Count Challenge here in August, and we’re discovering problems.

I continue to meet my goal of 500 new words daily, no matter the interruptions. I’v…

Hi, Everyone. It’s the second check-in for the Word Count Challenge here in August.

How have you done? Leave a comment about your goals and successes.

I’ve managed to meet my goal of 500 words daily,…

Old Challenge vs. New Challenge ~ that’s the theme for this week’s episode.

We say goodbye to the Summer Writing Challenge, which tracked all the pesky jobs that writers have to do in addition to the…

Hi, all. It’s the last full week of the Summer Writing Challenge. We’ll have one last day to report in our first August episode. This week, though, finishes out our challenge.

Did I succeed? Did I fa…

Hi, all! It’s our 8th check-in for the Summer Writing Challenge. A little over a week to go to the end of July BUT not the end of the Summer Writing Challenge.

I’ve struggled and I’ve soared in this …

Hi, all. Time for Check-In #7 of our Summer Writing Challenge with the theme of “What’s Up, Doc?”

The challenge this week was to steady up and recover from last week’s losses. Luckily, most of my wee…

Hi, All! Welcome from the Land of the Lost ~ Lost Days, Lost Time, Lost Plans, Lost Chances.

That’s me this past week, and I’m still dealing with the aftermath. I’m also scouting the area to find out…

Hi, all! Herewith is our 5th check-in for the Summer Writing Challenge. We’ve started a new month; we still have the same goals.

Of everything that I expected to happen in June, that did happen, disr…