In The Moment Writing From A Spacious Mind

This collection of poems and essays is where Zen and writing meet. Zen is about simply sitting and awakening to being a fully alive human being, interconnected with the world. Writing is about awakening the creative mind and allowing it to become fully alive and connected with the world. Each breath is a moment. Each word is a moment. The work presented here reflects some of those small moments.

Your personal gateway to one of the most effective daily tools for cultivating creativity, personal growth and productivity. Morning pages are three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing done first thing in the morning. They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind, and are intended to provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. This daily writing, coupled with the 12-week programme outlined in The Artist's Way, will help you discover and recover your personal creativity, artistic confidence and productivity. The Artist's Way Morning Pages Journal includes an introduction by Julia Cameron with complete instructions on how to use the morning pages and benefit fully from their daily use. Its inspiring quotations will guide you through the process, and a final chapter shows how to start an Artist's Way study group.

"Becoming a designer takes a huge amount of time and education. With so many skills to learn, many people never get the chance to master the one skill that can give them a real advantage in business or academia: They never learn to write well.” In Writing for the Design Mind author, designer and educator Natalia Ilyin offers clear, concise, and humorous writing tips, techniques and strategies to people who have spent their lives mastering design rather than learning to write. Ilyin's book helps designers approach writing in the same ways they approach designing – teaching skills and methods through encouragement, practical exercises and visual advice. Writing well is a skill, like any other, and with this book you can learn to do it with confidence. //Winner in the 50 Books | 50 Covers award 2019 from the AIGA//

Artistic collaboration is the most dangerous game around, except maybe for love. The McGoldricks have mastered both. I thought from the first time that I met them that they had something special going on. Now I understand the basis of their magical marriage. It’s called collaboration. – Evan Maxwell, NY Times bestselling novelist, collaborator, and writing columnist Part how-to book, part relationship book, Marriage of Minds offers strategies and techniques for creating successful collaborations and successful fiction. Drawing on their own personal and professional relationship, and on the relationships of other well-known collaborative teams, the McGoldricks walk you through the essentials of successful collaboration: – finding the “write” partner – developing skills in communication and the art of compromise – establishing guidelines – providing constructive feedback – working through “for better or worse” All you and your partner need are the ideas and the talent. Marriage of Minds will supply you with the rest. Nikoo and Jim McGoldrick are award-winning, USA Today bestselling authors of over four dozen novels and two works of nonfiction. They write under the pseudonyms May McGoldrick, Jan Coffey, and Nik James. They make their home in California. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you were inspired by On Writing by Stephen King or The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron or by Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody, and you want to write a novel, check out this helpful book. Keywords – how to write fiction, how to write with a partner, how to write a book an sell lots of copies, how to write young adult fiction, how to write romantic comedy, how to write romance novels, how to write characters, how to write a book, write collaborate, writing with a partner, writing fiction, writing fiction plots, writing bestsellers, writing fiction with a partner, writing romance with a partner.

Everyone has an opinion, anecdote, or horror story about women and work. Now the acclaimed author of What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast shows how real working women with families are actually making the most of their time. “Having it all” has become the subject of countless books, articles, debates, and social media commentary, with passions running high in all directions. Many now believe this to be gospel truth: Any woman who wants to advance in a challenging career has to make huge sacrifices. She’s unlikely to have a happy marriage, quality time with her kids (assuming she can have kids at all), a social life, hobbies, or even a decent night’s sleep. But what if balancing work and family is actually not as hard as it’s made out to be? What if all those tragic anecdotes ignore the women who quietly but consistently do just fine with the juggle? Instead of relying on scattered stories, time management expert Laura Vanderkam set out to add hard data to the debate. She collected hour-by-hour time logs from 1,001 days in the lives of women who make at least $100,000 a year. And she found some surprising patterns in how these women spend the 168 hours that every one of us has each week. Overall, these women worked less and slept more than they assumed they did before they started tracking their time. They went jogging or to the gym, played with their children, scheduled date nights with their significant others, and had lunches with friends. They made time for the things that gave them pleasure and meaning, fitting the pieces together like tiles in a mosaic—without adhering to overly rigid schedules that would eliminate flexibility and spontaneity. Vanderkam shares specific strategies that her subjects use to make time for the things that really matter to them. For instance, they . . . * Work split shifts (such as seven hours at work, four off, then another two at night from home). This allows them to see their kids without falling behind professionally. * Get creative about what counts as quality family time. Breakfasts together and morning story time count as much as daily family dinners, and they’re often easier to manage. * Take it easy on the housework. You can free up a lot of time by embracing the philosophy of “good enough” and getting help from other members of your household (or a cleaning service). * Guard their leisure time. Full weekend getaways may be rare, but many satisfying hobbies can be done in small bursts of time. An hour of crafting feels better than an hour of reality TV. With examples from hundreds of real women, Vanderkam proves that you don’t have to give up on the things you really want. I Know How She Does It will inspire you to build a life that works, one hour at a time.

Oh hey, guess what? New York Times bestseller Nick Seluk has a hilarious new nonfiction picture book all about your body's very own computer -- the brain! Have you ever thought about everything your brain does for you? It is always working to keep you alive and safe. (Plus it lets you think about funny stuff, too.) So why is the brain such a big deal? Because it makes you YOU, of course!This funny and factual picture book from Heart and Brain creator Nick Seluk explains the science behind everything the brain helps you do: keeping your heart beating, telling you when you are sleepy, remembering stuff, and more. The brain is in charge of everything you do, every minute of every day for your entire life. That's kind of a big deal.Each spread features bite-sized text and comic-style art with sidebars sprinkled throughout. Anthropomorphized organs and body parts -- recognizable from Nick Seluk's New York Times bestselling book -- help readers learn through funny jokes and comic panels. Funny, smart, and accessible, The Brain Is Kind of a Big Deal is a must-have!

A collection of personal writing exercises and commentary from some of today's best novelists, short story writers, and writing teachers, including Jill McCorkle, Amy Bloom, Robert Olen Butler, Steve Almond, Jayne Anne Phillips, Virgil Suarez, Margot Livesay, and more. What's the secret behind the successful and prolific careers of critically acclaimed novelists and short story writers Amy Bloom, Steve Almond, Jayne Anne Phillips, Alison Lurie, and others? Divine assistance? Otherworldly talent? An unsettlingly close relationship with the Muse? While the rest of us are staring at blank sheets of paper, struggling to come up with a first sentence, these writers are busy polishing off story after story and novel after novel. Despite producing work that may seem effortless, all of them have a simple technique for fending off writer's block: the writing exercise. In Now Write!, Sherry Ellis collects the personal writing exercises of today's best writers and lays bare the secret to their success. - In "The Photograph," Jill McCorkle divulges one of her tactics for handling material that takes plots in a million different directions; - National Book Award-nominee Amy Bloom offers "Water Buddies," an exercise for writers practicing their craft in workshops; - Steve Almond, author of My Life in Heavy Metal and Candyfreak, provides a way to avoiding purple prose in "The Five-Second Shortcut to Writing in the Lyric Register"; - and eighty-three more of the country's top writers disclose their strategies for creating memorable prose. Complemented by brief commentary from the authors themselves, the exercises in Now Write! are practical and hands-on. By encouraging writers to shamelessly steal proven techniques that have yielded books which have won National Book Awards, Pulitzers, and Guggenheim grants, Now Write! inspires the aspiring writer to write now.

Something is going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and afraid to speak honestly. How did this happen? First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths are incompatible with basic psychological principles, as well as ancient wisdom from many cultures. They interfere with healthy development. Anyone who embraces these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—is less likely to become an autonomous adult able to navigate the bumpy road of life. Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to produce these untruths. They situate the conflicts on campus in the context of America’s rapidly rising political polarization, including a rise in hate crimes and off-campus provocation. They explore changes in childhood including the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.