Tag: Nicole

  • Z Is For… A Zen‑Like Wrap‑Up!

    Z Is For… A Zen‑Like Wrap‑Up!

    As April comes to a close, we find ourselves at the final letter of the A to Z Challenge — Z, the soft landing at the end of a month‑long creative journey. This year’s theme, The A to Z of Creative Practice, invited our community to explore the many ways we make, imagine, reflect, and grow as artists and writers.

    And what a month it has been.

    Each day brought a new voice, a new perspective, and a new facet of creative life. From Attention to Practice to Yes!, our members shared insights, stories, tools, and encouragement — a collective reminder that creativity is not a solitary act, but a shared ecosystem.

    A Month of Many Voices

    This year, we were fortunate to feature nine guest authors, each bringing their own lens on creative practice:

    • Tina Holland — Bravo, Education, and Travel
    • Rachel Wilder — Characters and Signs
    • Laura Rios — Demos and Discussions, Initiative, and Preparation
    • JaeSage — Gregarious Gusto, Journaling, Liberation, and Resilience
    • Nicole — Observation and Quest
    • Annette Grantham — Friction!
    • Alexandra Sissulak — Unusual Approaches
    • Carol Baxter — V Words for Writers and Xanthippes
    • Evey — Yes!

    And woven among them were posts from our in‑house contributors, including reflections on Attention to Practice, Kindness, and Noon & Wilder.

    Every post added a thread to the tapestry. Every voice shaped the month.

    What We Created Together

    Across April, we explored:

    • craft and craftiness
    • momentum and pause
    • friction and flow
    • signs, symbols, and stories
    • the ways travel, observation, and unusual approaches enrich our work
    • the power of community, curiosity, and kindness

    The A to Z Challenge is always a marathon, but it’s also a celebration — a chance to show up, share, and witness each other’s creativity in motion.

    A Moment of Gratitude

    Thank you to every contributor who wrote, drafted, revised, and hit “publish.” Thank you to every reader who followed along. Thank you to everyone who showed up in whatever way they could this month.

    Creative practice is built on small, steady acts. This April, we made them together.

    Z Is for… Zen

    As we close the month, Z invites us into a moment of quiet appreciation — a breath, a pause, a settling. The work continues, of course, but today we honor the journey we’ve taken.

    And if you’d like to keep the momentum going, remember: Writer Zen Garden sends out a community newsletter on the first of every month. It’s a gentle way to stay connected, catch upcoming events, and keep your creative practice nourished all year long. Click here to subscribe.

    Here’s to the stories we told, the ideas we sparked, and the community that held it all.

    Happy Z‑Day, friends.

  • Q Is For… Quest!

    Q Is For… Quest!

    Contributed by Nicole.

    A quest is the arc of your writing. It is the progression of your work to its end. It does not have to be a grand thing: it can just mean that your quest is to provide information, like news articles or a masters’ thesis.

    In the case of fiction, your ‘quest’ the arc of your story. It does not have to be an epic endeavor (At least on your character’s part-we all know the effort that goes into writing!). You don’t have to be on the scale of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or Eddings’ Belgariad; it can be smaller with less stakes.  Sometimes, you are just not in the mood for a world saving quest. There is now a subgenre that is called ‘Slice of Life’ where the quest is just to shuck the trappings of an ‘epic’ journey and start a life in an out-of-the-way place in a fantasy setting. Travis Baldree’s ‘Legends and Lattes’ is a very good example of this. Your characters have to have a goal to work toward and your story is the record of their work, trials and tribulations toward that goal.

    Writers have their own quest: finish a body of work. That quest can be a little daunting. It requires effort, commitment, and attention to detail. May you have good fortune in that journey.

     

     

  • O Is For… Observation!

    O Is For… Observation!

    Contributed by Nicole.

    Observation for writers is both a key factor and our personal hell. We observe our environment, people and the world around us and transmit that through our writing. It’s our personal hell because how you transmit those observations can be very difficult.

    In the case of a fiction writers, how a character examines and interacts with their environment affects the narrative. How you communicate their observations has to be tailored to the individual or to the situation. For instance, a ten-year-old child is going to view the world in a significantly different way from a battle-hardened veteran. The way the information is relayed to the reader sets the tone and drives the story.

    Observation can be a tool to get yourself out of a rut. I take a blank notebook to a busy place like a park or a mall food court and watch people. Why is that particular woman going into the jewelry store? Is she picking up a gift? Is she arranging to have her jewelry cleaned? Maybe she just learned that her partner is cheating on her and she’s buying something to make herself feel beautiful and valued. What about the buff looking guy grabbing pizza? Is he cheating on his diet plan and worried that his coach will find out? Maybe he’s an MME fighter and he’s plotting ways to impress the female opponent who beat him last week and he knows that she hits the smoothie place next door? Looking around and asking ‘why’ and ‘what if’ is an affective way to take your characters in new directions or have them approach a problem in a different way.

    Observation becomes a writer’s personal hell because we are compelled to relay how we view the world and that is difficult. Finding the words to give a picture that can be understood is hard-don’t let anyone tell you differently.

    In the end, writers are observers and the way we communicate our views is how we write, so ‘O’ is for ‘Observation’.

  • R Is For… Raise or Raze!!

    #AtoZChallenge 2025 letter R

    Contributed by Nicole.

    Raise can have a few meanings. Raise can mean ‘to help grow’. It can also mean ‘to elevate’. Of course, you can also use the other form; ‘raze’ which means ‘to destroy’.

    We have all been there. We look at what we have been working on and just want to through it out, delete it in disgust, struggle with the desire to take a hammer to the keyboard to make your computer an effigy to your creative dissatisfaction with what your brain has wrought or light whatever physical manifestation of your work on fire.

    Your characters are just not doing what you want them to do. In fact, they are all but blowing raspberries in your direction. If you’re a painter, your colors are running or just not right, not fitting your vision. Or, you just sneezed in the middle of a brush stroke and the pigment did a weird zig zag.

    But wait! Pull back from razing your work and ‘raise’ it. My personal trick is to copy and paste the work into a separate document and file it in my ‘Snippets’ folder. There is a chance that I can use it at a later date or in another story. I make it like a seedling in the Potting Shed of my imagination to be planted in a story at a later date.

    I am fairly certain that painters have their own tricks. Maybe the zig zag can be incorporated into the design in a new way. Or, you may be able to scrape it off. You may be able to just run with it.

    Sometimes the creative process is a series of highs and lows. The low points happen, and you just cannot use what just came out of your brain. I know that recently, I stared at eight hundred thirty seven words of work that just did not fit into the situation that I was trying to write. I could not get my characters to the next point with what was sitting on my Word document.

    I can admit it: I highlighted the whole shebang and was one keystroke away from wiping from existence and that universe, but sanity prevailed, and it went into ‘Snippets’. Partly because I do not want to have wasted that time but also because it could be a metaphorical transplant into a separate ‘garden’ or a new bed in my existing one later on.

    That scene can help elevate the existing story later or go into a new work by changing the characters. I can ‘raise’ it rather than ‘raze’ it.

    Sometimes you will ‘raze’ or destroy your work. If you look at that mental garden bed and see weeds rather than tomatoes and you just put all of what you yank out of the ground in the metaphorical compost pile, then accept it and move on. After all, gardens need fertilizer too and your mental compost may lead to something truly beautiful. Growth can come from destruction as well as from effort.

  • R Is For… Research!

    Contributed by Nicole

    Research is the dread goddess that breathes true life into our writing with the help of her consort, the Internet.

    With the advent of the Internet and social media sites, it isn’t quite the onerous duty that it once was. A great deal of information is literally at our fingertips with the Internet. Social Media also lets reach out to your subject matter experts for more in depth knowledge. You know, if you are going to write about a zombie apocalypse, why not talk to a microbiologist? If you are writing about the police department in a specific town, call that department and see if one of the officers is willing to chat a bit. .

    And, of course, there is still the library with their digital catalog, electronic books and those glorious hard copy repositories of information called ‘books’.

    Realism will resonate with your readers, so research!

     

  • Q Is For… Quiet Time!

    Contributed by Nicole.

    ‘Quiet Time’ can be a relative term that is conditional to the person. Maybe ‘Personal Time’ would be a better way of phrasing it. It is an individual’s way of recharging or just letting the world fall away for a moment or two. It could mean putting on music and either drifting away or letting the drum sent your own heart beat. It could be working on an engine, picking up knitting needles, uncapping a marker to color a picture; it is any way that you can take a deep breath and let some of your stress go.

    These personal moments are very important and should not be neglected.

  • B Is For… Blocked!

    Contributed by Nicole:

    I know that I am not a professional writer yet and this might be a radical thought on my part, but I don’t believe in Writer’s Block. Can you be stymied by a story, have your characters be uncooperative, written yourself into a corner? Absolutely. But completely blocked? Yeah, I don’t believe in it.

    I like to share some of the strategies that I employ when I have trouble.

    Go back to your outline.

    If your story is the journey that you are taking your characters through, then your outline is your road map. Have your characters taken shortcut not on the map? Maybe you need to backtrack and get back on the proper highway.

    Work on a different story.

    Sometimes you just need to get your head into a different space. Concentrate on another character or situation for a bit and then come back to the story that is giving me trouble.

    Role Play

    Grab your partner, a friend, or a member of your family (anyone that didn’t escape you quick enough) and try trading ideas back and forth.

    People watch and play ‘what if?’

    I grab a blank composition book and go to a park, restaurant or some other public place and look around.  What if that harried barista is a hacker in their spare time? What if that single dad trying to corral his kids used to be an assassin? What if that guy in the three-piece suit is wearing women’s lingerie on under his other clothes? What if the goth coming out of Hot Topics secretly wants to be a hairdresser? What if the big, bike with tattoos scrolling up his arms is planning a romantic dinner for his lady? ‘What if’ are the words that every writer lives by.

    I have never not had one of these strategies shake something loose in my head.

    What about you, dear reader? What strategies work for you?

  • Food For Thought

    by guest contributor, Nicole

    I love to eat this warm with a dollop of jam. It’s a perfect cool or cold weather treat.
    –Nicole

    Rice Pudding

    Ingredients

    1/2 cup (4oz/115g) starchy rice (Aborio, Calrose, Sushi rice)
    2 Cans of Coconut Milk
    1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
    1/4 Nutmeg
    1 teaspoon vanilla extract
    Honey or Maple Syrup to taste (I use about 1/4 cup)

    Directions

    Into a medium saucepan over low heat add in all of the above ingredients and allow to come to a gentle simmer.
    Cook on low for roughly 35-40 minutes or until the rice is tender and the liquid has thickened but not absorbed fully. Stir occasionally.
    Remove from the heat while the rice pudding is still quite ‘saucy’ and allow to sit for 20 minutes. During this time the rice will continue to absorb the liquid leaving you with a rich and creamy rice pudding. Add your sweetener to taste.
    Serve warm or cold with a dollop of raspberry jam on top.
    Once cold, store in the fridge for up to 4 days.

  • Essential Ingredients

    I had an irresistible urge to re-read The School of Essential Ingedients by Erica Bauermeister today. The story follows several characters who take a cooking class in vivid detail. While each individual character’s story is perhaps too short to be truly satisfying, I can’t help but sink into the world that Bauermeister creates. Every page is a feast for the senses – tastes and sounds and smells and touches so clearly drawn that you cannot help but feel like you’re in the same room as the characters.

    Now, I love food. I’m not always very adventurous in terms of what I actually eat, but there is almost nothing I enjoy more than sitting around a table with friends and family and diving into a really great meal, from appetizers through dessert. So of course I love a book that’s all about the ways food can evoke and create memories and really shape our lives.
    What drew me to The School of Essential Ingredients today, though, was not so much the food, but the author’s ability to make me taste it and feel it. The language isn’t especially complex, the word choices are plain language rather than literary extravaganzas mined from a thesaurus. But each sentence is carefully crafted and fitted to its place in the story.
    Sometimes I need to remember that. That it’s not always about word count or productivity, but about the craft itself, about making the words on the page really count.

  • Point of View

    Point of View
    Oh, those three dreaded words.  I have gotten to the point as a writer that I understand POV is an important storytelling tool.  I have even been dragged kicking and screaming into a place where I agree that flowing back and forth between points of view without any kind of transition is a bad thing.  Still, I cannot say that I had any real connection to point of view before today.

    Ever since I first accepted that I really needed to stick with one point of view at a time, that’s basically what I’ve done.  One point of view per story, period.  I know that the trend is for readers to prefer alternating points of view, but I admit I’m not there yet.  Writing a story with multiple, deliberately chosen points of view still feels rather like a cannonball off of the high dive to me.  Or, after yesterday, maybe from the middle platform.
    So, what happened yesterday, you ask?
    I have a pair of characters that I love, but who are challenging for me to write.  Up to this point the best I’ve been able to do with them is to write down whatever scraps of scenes they are inclined to give me, regardless of point of view.  It’s not a great way to get a cohesive story onto the page, but it’s the only way I’ve been able to make any kind of progress with them up to this point.  And, truth be told, the POV didn’t seem to make a lot of difference.  By that I mean there didn’t seem to be anything so compelling about the way a scene played out that changing points of view down the road would be difficult.
    And then I sat down at the keyboard last night to write a scene from one character’s perspective and found myself writing from the other character’s perspective instead.  The contrast between the scene I’d planned and the scene that made its way onto paper is startling.  By putting the new character in charge of the scene I almost completely undermined a conflict later in the story.  A scene that should have been introspective and filled with knowing glances became charged with angst and sexual tension.
    Everyone says this, but I swear it’s the truth here.  A light came on in my mind.  All of a sudden I had real, tangible evidence of how different a story can be depending on who’s telling it.  I was finally able to compare scenes and really see how the tone changes based on which character’s POV is reflected there.  For the first time I could actually understand how controlling the point of view would allow me to control the reader’s experience of the story.
    I actually learned a LOT about the characters, too.  How they tell their stories has a lot to do with who they are; their personalities, backgrounds, etc.  I hadn’t realized how different these characters are until I saw the scene coming out in two such different versions.
    There is a big difference from understanding this intellectually and actually applying it to the story.  In this moment, though, I feel powerful.  I have transformed from a stubborn girl scuffing her toes in the gravel to an honest-to-goodness writer.  I can do anything, including use point of view effectively.
    Realistically we are not going to spend a lot of time developing scenes from multiple points of view.  We’re too busy for that.  But I would encourage everyone who struggles with point of view to take at least one scene and really try to imagine it from both sides. 
    Don’t just change the names and pronouns.  This isn’t about technical definitions and memorizing the difference between third person omniscient and present perfect.  This is about understanding how to make point of view a tool you can use.  Sink yourself completely into the mindset of a different character and see what happens to your scene.  It might surprise you.