Inspiration is a wonderful thing, especially to an artist. It’s the reason every painting doesn’t depict the same vase of flowers or gathering of canines playing cards. It’s the moment when the metaphorical lights go on and the liquid flow of random thoughts crystallizes into a tangible idea. It is also the reason I’m tired, cranky and huddled over my second cup of coffee like it were the last embers of a fire during a blizzard.

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As a kid my mother always was after me to eat my vegetables, a mission that I have had only moderate success with for most of my life. So this weekend I did something I rarely do, I tried something faddish from Hollywood. Green Smoothies. Having made these babies now, the name is a misnomer. Soylent Green might be closer to the truth.

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Last night I finished my third novel. Oh, it still needs to go to my trusted proof readers and have the typos and apostrophe catastrophes fixed, but it is, for all intents and purposes, a completed work. And that means I have down time.

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I live in the great white north, where polar bears reportedly roam the city streets and we are all supposed to commute by dogsled alongside the caribou herds.

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The more I read in general and read about writing in particular, the more I’ve learned I have yet to learn. It’s all a bit boggling at times.

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Not for the time spent with family, or the food, or the parties. No, I love this time of year because of the quiet.

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It’s been a very odd sort of week for me, with all the problems of a four year old’s first piano recital. Wrong notes, false starts, and an overwhelming desire to just get the whole thing over with as fast as possible. That being the case, I thought I’d write up a hodge-podge collection of lessons learned and insights gained over the past seven days.

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There was a time when I thought that being a writer just meant having the ability to tell a good story, to capture the reader and draw them into world you created. In the past few months I have learned that it’s a hell of a lot more complicated than that, and that writing is a continuous quest to learn, improve and strive to master a skill set so vast I really should have started twenty years ago.

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This evening I had the enjoyable excuse to take out my best friend for an evening of fine food and “child free” conversation in celebration of said friend’s birthday. I’d state her age, but some milestones are best left unremarked, especially ones that end in a zero.

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All around me friends and family have been succumbing to the joys of cold and flu season. Snuffling, sneezing, feverish and wheezing their way through the days as I have smugly taken my vitamins and bounced along, feeling just fine thank you for asking. Well, I’ve gotten my comeuppance, and now I wish I’d just gotten the flu like everyone else.

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