A Plethora of Publications

I have been a crazy publishing machine lately, and I’m finally down to two books that are still works-in-progress. Below are the books I’ve published this year. Click on the photos to find out more about them. For the next few days, the Kindle edition of Busy Teacher’s Guide to Macbeth is on sale for $0.99 at Amazon.com and $1.25 at Amazon.ca. More about the Busy Teacher’s Guides and support material for the books is here.

One work-in-progress is a grammar and writing book for the Better Business Communication series and the other is a writing journal just for teen writers–I’m very excited about that one! When I was a teen, I would have loved to have a journal to write in that was designed just for me. I’m busily looking for inspiring quotes from published teen authors to sprinkle among the pages. I’m also going to create two editions–one with images that you can colour and one without. Adult colouring books are all the rage for de-stressing, but frankly, teenagers need all the de-stressing they can get–been one, parented one, taught thousands–so in one edition I’m going to include images for colouring. I wrote about my own use of colouring to clear the mind for creativity in Writing Prompts and More–. Here’s an excerpt from that chapter.

Before they became popular, I was already coloring pictures in books as a way to clear my mind before getting creative. It happened by accident. I used to love to draw when I was a kid. I thought it might be fun to try again, so I bought The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Drawing, which should give you a clear idea of my talent level. The book is full of drawing exercises for freeing your creativity and silencing the ‘critical voice’ that lurks inside your head, waiting to talk you out of even trying.

Coincidentally, I was playing with one of these exercises before some precious writing time and, when I began to write, my fingers flew across the keyboard. I’ve tried this again and again with the same result. I realized that I had found a way to create the inner quiet that I needed to write. When I draw, I’m incapable of thinking about anything except where my pencil is going next. Everything else disappears and the critic is silent.

If you’re worried that your attempts to draw a picture would make your critical voices unite in a volume rivaling a room full of pre-schoolers with free ice-cream, grab a coloring book and color a picture. Just choosing colors and concentrating on staying in the lines can be a very quieting experience. As in drawing, the world slips away for enough time to quiet the voices and let your creativity emerge.

Bye for now. Hope your July is a writerly one!

PicMonkey Collage

PicMonkey Collage newwriting prompts and more

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