Category Archives: Breakthrough Tip of the Week

(David Salle) once told me that he never makes any preparatory drawings for or revises anything in his paintings. Every stroke of the brush is irrevocable; nothing can be changed or retracted. A few false moves and the painting is ruined, unsalvageable…He also once told me of how he often gets lost as he paints:… Continue Reading >>>

You don’t begin. You begin and stop. You don’t resume. You believe that without directions, you are lost. Writing is hard work. If you’re lucky, you remember when writing seemed to pour through you. You were a conduit. You didn’t need to think, and if you did think, the writing seemed to go flat. Now,… Continue Reading >>>

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking. – Jerry Seinfeld, comedian  Writing is one of the last pieces of evidence that people are still grateful and giving a damn. – Mary Sojourner I write from eighty-one years of life. I write from sixty-nine years of… Continue Reading >>>

Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.  —Neil Gaiman Tell us a lie. Tell us a lie about your truth. Shape what isn’t into what is. Don’t tell… Continue Reading >>>

You give into distraction as if it is a murderer; you lie there, waiting to be killed Today: fight for your life.  —-Miranda July I have avoided writing about the Corona virus – in the same way that I almost never wrote about Donald Trump. I have believed that both pathogens have been treated in… Continue Reading >>>