Lisa Tener
Book Writing Coach
Welcome to Day 27 in our community jaunt through The Joy of Writing Journal: Spark Your Creativity in 8 Minutes a Day. In her memoir, Bless Your Little Cotton Socks, Diane Radford, MD shares the quirky sayings of her delightfully inventive Scottish mother. The saying inspired the title of today’s prompt. In my journaling, I…
Imagine someone publishing a book so much like the one you’re writing. It could be devastating to discover “someone wrote my book,” but there’s another way to see this as an opportunity. “What do you do when you find out a book was just published that is almost exactly what you had in mind writing? I…
Welcome to Day 26 on the journey through The Joy of Writing Journal. Here I share an excerpt from my journey and I hope you will share something about yours—an excerpt, an insight, a challenge, a joy… Today’s prompt invites you to choose a favorite or least favorite room in your home. Then imagine a…
The online Nonfiction Writers Conference is an excellent resource for navigating the world of book publishing and promotion, so you can get that book into the hands of your would-be readers! This Fall’s conference takes place Nov. 4 and 5, with “Ask-a-Pro” sessions throughout the whole week. Once again, I’m one of the featured experts…
Welcome to Day 25 on the journey through The Joy of Writing Journal. Today we explore some of our quirky personality traits and how they help us as writers. The truth is, I just realized that, while I wrote my Day 25 list of quirky traits, I never answered the prompt about how these traits…
Welcome to Day 24 on the journey through The Joy of Writing Journal. Here I share an excerpt from my journey and I hope you will share something about yours—an excerpt, an insight, a challenge, a joy… My dad was a true character with a brilliant mind—a renaissance man, English teacher, musical genius / composer,…
Welcome to Day 23 on the journey through The Joy of Writing Journal. Here I share an excerpt from my journey and I hope you will share something about yours—an excerpt, an insight, a challenge, a joy… Months after 5 days in the hospital and a couple emergency room visits on both ends, I journal…
Today we list 5 perceived flaws or strengths of ours. Or else of someone we admire. Do that now! Then we flip it. Explore how that strength can also be a flaw or how the flaw can be a strength. It’s a useful exercise in expanding our perceptions and perspective. I have trouble with the…
Note things that happened this past week that you can write about; make note of things that inspired you; schedule your writing times.
My journaling exploration leads to a couple of poems, one that ends with my sliding down a rock and stopping just before an opalescent oil slick.
In today’s journaling session I write about a huge, colorful beachball expelled by the waves in Narragansett Bay. It bounded directly to my friend Paula as we walked back from the brackish pond at Casey Point. She held out her hands and caught it. Before searching for its owner on the little cove, we decided…
You burn the letters
Of the disquieted dead
Hoping to silence them.
“In the sting of January, I put on my navy blue knee-length, cashmere sweater. I zip it up to my chin and stuff the pockets with Kleenex.”
Welcome to Day 16 in our community jaunt through The Joy of Writing Journal: Spark Your Creativity in 8 Minutes a Day. One activity I assign to all aspiring authors at the beginning of a project is to create a vision statement that you can read to inspire you, create momentum and also help you…
In today’s video, Sherry Burton Ways Steine, author of Feel Good Spaces, shares three tips for enhancing your writing space for creative flow.
Today we’re writing about our writing dreams, dreams for our writing life and you can find the details in The Joy of Writing Journal: Spark Your Creativity in 8 Minutes a Day. In my journal, I discover that none of the five so-called writing dreams I listed actually feels like it’s mine. Maybe that’s the…
These posts are designed to work with The Joy of Writing Journal: Spark Your Creativity in 8 Minutes a Day. If you haven’t bought your copy yet, get it here and join us for the free October Journaling Adventure! We have a few celebrity novelists in today’s video: New York Times Bestselling author (for multiple…
My list for today included many places I’ve wanted to visit for a long time—India, Iceland, Utah—and a few I briefly glimpsed and wish to really see—Mount Shasta, Thailand. But the last entry surprised me—Israel. You could say I’ve internalized my parents’ fear of danger there—from the violence and bombing throughout my childhood. You’d be…
Today’s prompt stirs memories of my cousin’s bar mitzvah—all the ancient relatives from my dad’s side that I’ve never met before, or met once or twice. I’m eight or eleven and confused by all these seeming strangers. I feel particularly embarrassed when Grandma Stella sings. Her intense emotion makes Barbara Streisand seem tame… …Now that…
I love to write in the morning but it’s rare that I wake pre-dawn. Today’s prompt reminds me of a particular summer morning before or after ninth grade when I woke particularly early. While everyone else slept, I wrote in my journal. I lay in bed in our old Victorian New Brunswick summer house along…
