Story ideas and prompts to combat the dreaded blank page.

I'm digressing a bit with this blog post, I know. I'm supposed to be writing about liberating my exiled children's book manuscript from the confines of my file cabinet... Instead, I was thinking about other imaginative folks that have struggled with their own artistic self-worth, like I have over the years. A simple dialogue came to mind, a short play, if you will. I call it "The Unwelcome Guest". (House lights dim) Guest: "Knock, knock." Creative Spirit: "I know who you ar

My creative baby was ugly, at least that's what I thought.

I was finished. Finally finished with my first children's book manuscript - a 55-verse children's poem. I had worked on it for weeks - whenever I could - and among the torn-out, stapled spiral pages, and the jots on memo and used printer paper, the semblance of the work took shape. It asked to be assembled, collated and edited to form. Yes, really, it was supposed to be longer (unbelievable) but since I'm one of those writers that edits as I go, it seemed to find its own com

I don't really remember the exact day that it came about, but I do remember that I'd decided to take a nap. Nothing feels better to a pregnant woman than some great sleep - the kind of sleep that doesn't visit very often in the third trimester. That day, I was ready, it was the couch...and my pillow was in that special configuration (I love it when that happens). Just as I was dozing off, an idea for a poem - a dream-story - started taking shape in my mind. Two toy characters