Do not stop at description. It is not enough. It is the uncut fabric, it is the unsewn piece, and it is far from the final product your readers can apply to their lives.

Organize your notes regularly. Otherwise, as in a weedy garden, your ideas will not flourish like the beautiful flowers they were meant to be.

The New Year's Happiness Raffle

In your foyer, place a bowl filled with rolled-up slips of paper containing personal messages and poems of your own composition, and ask each guest to draw one as they come in.

A writer keeps a notebook to flush excess thoughts and maintain a clear mind.

Write without guilt. Paint without guilt.

Write and paint on the first day of the New Year, for what you do on that day subconsciously sets a trend for the rest of your year.

A Writer's Year-End Exercise

If you are keeping a journal, reflect on your previous year, a month at a time, from January to your present situation. Write one important thing you learned each month, coming up with a list of 36 (or less). Which three things helped you the most to grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually?

Draw a pyramid of squares (bottom row, five squares, middle row, four squares, top row, three squares) and arrange your 12 lessons accordingly with the three most important things you learned on top.

Then draw three blank squares to complete the pyramid. Write, inside those squares, what you hope to attain in 2018.

Every story has a beginning, middle, and end. Once you have written its end, do not dredge it up again at some other time in the future. Otherwise it is a sign that you ended your story too soon and failed to reflect on it.

If you feel that you must rewrite your work, do so. It is the equivalent of a painter adjusting his composition, color combination, contrast, and/or tone.

Write as though your life and other people's lives are on the line.

Never be concerned about being published. Always be concerned about being read.

Every writer enjoys sitting alone in a coffee shop and watching all kinds of people go by.

In-Depth Writing Exercise #8: Merging With The Elements

This exercise sounds easier than it seems.

1. Should you happen to have four, small, translucent glass containers with lids:

--fill the first glass with potting soil (earth),
--the second with incense dust (air),
--the third with ashes (fire),
--the fourth with sand (water).

Should you have two more:

--fill the fifth glass with sawdust (wood),
--and the sixth with iron filings (metal/iron).

2. Place the bottles on your writing desk--the more decorative they look, of course, the better.

3. Do this exercise not at whim but whenever you seem to be stuck on a passage or a scene that you are writing.

4. Take the bottles one at a time, holding each bottle in your hands, merging with the element and then re-visualizing or mentally re-composing the passage or scene in your mind.

5. You will find that each element will "write" the scene or passage for you in a different and distinct way.

6. Go with the scene or passage that resonates within you most, like an inner bell, an inner chime, or an inner tuning fork.

7. Your choice may determine the dominant element in your particular piece of writing.

We write things down because it easier to edit our thoughts on paper than inside our minds.

Don't trash the immature stories, novels, and plays that you began to write when you were young. Years later, long after you have matured, they will reemerge like shining spears of crystal quartz and illuminate your oeuvre with brilliant works. 

If you seem stuck while writing your work, consider the same scene in a different setting.

Never write or paint without a clear vision of your work in your mind and in your heart.

Know how much stamina your mind and your body are capable of. If they are easily exhausted, rest often. Do not force yourself to continue writing or painting--your work will suffer aside from your mind and your body.

Successful and effective contemporary writing does not hinge on "new techniques", "new ideas", "gimmicks", or "young blood".

It hinges on the writer's ability to take timeless truths and present them within contemporary circumstances.

A good writer never rambles, in writing and in person.

Do you expend all of your energy, spend the best part of your day, and set aside a lot of time to consult others while you are writing your piece--AND THEN sit back flabbergasted when another writer simply turns his wrist and produces a masterpiece?

That is because you are writing from another person's truth, not your own.

Write from your own truth. It is as unique as your set of fingerprints.

Knowing language, its craft, and its nuances comprises 30% of the requirements for writing. Your powers of observation, capacity for reflection, insight, memory recall, and emotional truthfulness comprise 69%, while 1% goes to your enjoyment of using writing instruments, whether pen or paper or electronic media.

All of those combined constitute your talent.

A long as you have that, you need not copy other people's "styles". Your individual experience is your truth, and your truth is your writing.

Every work should present new challenges, unique ones that you've never encountered before. If you tend to produce the same work over and over, it means that you never met up to the old challenges to begin with and are still trying to master them.

Like painting, writing must be done in successive layers and glazes.

Write for the world because you write for yourself, keeping in mind that your own country and your family also read you.

There is really no such thing as lack of inspiration. As long as you are alive, you learn at least one interesting story everyday that can be developed into exciting, visual art or literature.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks: "Make Sure" by Clara

Hello Clara!

You submitted a well-written draft. If _Birth Days_ was a dramatic essay, "Make Sure" is a dramatic commentary. That these forms emerge in your oeuvre is definitely a result of your journalism. Here are my comments:

--The initial repartee between the GUARD and the DOCENT comes across as unreal, unless your intention is to write an absurd play a la Eugene Ionesco, which your work actually verges on.
--You are much better at writing in pure, straight English rather than mixing in Malay words for the GUARD's dialogue, unless you are intentionally portraying racial disconnect.
--Review your dialogue in favor of the spoken word, especially in your first few pages. I will give you only the first example I encountered: In Scene 1, Page 1, 9th Line from the Bottom, the GUARD says, "Please make sure you wear and display your sticker on your shirt at all times, while in the museum". If you omit the words and phrases in brackets--"Please [make sure you] wear [and display] your sticker [on your shirt] at all times[, while in the museum]", you will come up with "Please wear your sticker at all times", which is how it will be delivered in real life. I realize, of course, that your title is "Make Sure", so you could perhaps retain that.
--Exercise economy. Your play has too much art; it is almost like name-dropping.
--Your characters are not pleasant persons, so consider how that can actually alienate your audience.
--Your audience will be engaged only as late as Scene 5.
--The twist in Scene 8 is clever, but, after watching the play for the first time, will the audience want to watch it more than once, knowing that there is a twist in Scene 8?
--Over all, make up your mind as to what your play is focusing on: Absurdity of social norms? The value of breaking rigid rules? Authoritarianism and rebelliousness? Racial disconnect? The play dips in and out of those topics. As a result, the premise is unclear. For this one-act play, either go totally Absurd or totally Aristotelian.

Your work is promising, but ask yourself how many producers would actually take it and put it onstage. Otherwise it might be better off as a prose article.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _Birth Days_ by Clara

Hello Clara!

You did a wonderful job doing work and polishing your play after our session in Singapore. Your biggest advantage as a playwright is that you have unusually keen powers of observation, and are able to translate the information acquired by your senses to vivid poetry.

Here are my comments:

--Your work is not so much a play as a dramatic essay. Keep that genre in mind as you proceed to prepare it for reading.
--Always be mindful of the spoken word as opposed to the written word. Read your play aloud, audiotape yourself, and listen. For example, in Act 1 Scene 1, Page 1, Line 5, you have a line that goes "I'd stated that I was right". Delete "that" so that the line reads "I'd stated I was right". Say those two lines aloud. Isn't the second easier to project and to listen to?
--Act 2, Scene 1, Page 24 is set in an airport, and your character is on a travellator. Your producer will not spend money to construct a travellator onstage just for this one, transitory scene. Avoid cinematic visualizing. Be kind to your director and your production designer; make their jobs as easy for them as possible. Directors and production designers do not like working on problems the playwright creates for them--rather, they like taking a playwright's simple, straightforward work and challenging themselves by creating complex problems off it.
--Act 2, Scene 2, Page 33, Michael's entrance is contrived and seems out of a TV sitcom. The sound of a flushing toilet that precedes his entrance will only elicit laughter from the audience. Michael is only one man in a play filled with a bevy of women. I suggest that you cut him out and reveal his affair with Leng via exposition--either in a monologue or in dialogue between Sabine and her mother. As written in this play, Michael is a mere prop or cardboard cut-out. If you can't give a performer a substantial role, don't even write it. I have the same comment for the children Aiden and Isaac, who appear in only one scene and will only incur the production two additional talent fees. If you MUST have children there, though, change them to girls, thereby giving your play an all-female cast.
--All monologues: Study them carefully. A monologue isn't just a long-drawn speech to be delivered onstage. EVERY monologue must have a premise (conforming to the premise of the entire play), rising action, a climax, and a denouement. Note that any monologue that does not have these will tend to be boring and can actually be deleted--because anything that does not push the premise of the play forward should be deleted.
--Your wrap-up and ending are effective. However this will work only if, from the beginning of the play to the very end, ALL characters are seated in a circle round the main playing area. As such, there will be no entrances and no exits.

Overall, great work, and congratulations! This is a play that should be watched not only by every woman in Singapore but by every woman in the world.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _A Commitment_ by Ivan

Hello Ivan!

Your draft promises an interesting play. Be mindful, however, that the subject of gay marriages and gay partnerships has been tackled by other playwrights before; your play will shine only if it offers new, 21st-century insights. Here are my comments:

--Page 1, Line 5, Stage Direction, Top of Page: "at the bottom right corner" = "at the bottom right corner of the mirror"
--Always proofread your work. For example, Page 1, Line 1: "thought" = "taught". There are many other examples all throughout your work. A play with a lot of typos is like a photograph that is out of focus.
--You begin your play with parallel scenes depicting flashbacks and the present time. This is unfair to the persons performing the flashbacks. Their roles are not acting roles. The information they provide the audience is better off relayed as exposition.
--Consider visualizing the play without sets and props.
--Scene 10 is an abrupt flashback. How will the audience know this change in time if the players are the same players and of almost the same chronological ages as they are in the present time?
--Scene 11 is under-written and creates an aesthetic imbalance. Remember that you are writing a play, not a movie script that can employ long shots, close-ups, cut-to-cut shots, and a sound track.
--Finally, Scene 12 is the real beginning of the play. It is when the real dramatic crisis occurs, and it is as close to the climax as possible.

Do NOT be discouraged, Ivan. Mull over Scene 12 and see if you can propel the play from that scene onward without the use of flashbacks.

I look forward to the development of your play.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _Between the Lines_ by Danial

Hello Danial!

I enjoyed reading the draft you sent me. Here are my comments:

--A problem is dramatic only when something big is at stake, otherwise it is merely melodrama. You manifest unusual maturity in your writing, though, and I am certain that you can elevate the domestic issue you are writing about to a higher level. Depth in characterization is one way to do that; I can tell from what I have read so far that you are capable of doing it.

--Page 6, Line 13. ANDREW states that he gets to see his father only twice a year. Yet, on Page 9, Lines 12 and 19, SANDRA and MOTHER indicate that Danial gets to see his father on "weekends" and "some weekends".

--Page 12, First Stage Direction, Top of Page. In real life, a person administering a drawing test gives a subject a minimum of 30 minutes to complete his drawing. This gives allowance for the subject's anxiety and subconscious resistance--especially a subject who claims that he does not know how to draw.

--Page 12, Line 4. A 15-year-old boy will not draw a heart in the presence of a female psychiatrist, unless he has a crush on her. At that age, masculine power symbols (or broken power symbols, indicating impotence or frustration) would be more appropriate.

--Page 12, Line 9. ANDREW's narrative using the third person comes across as artificial or insincere.

--SANDRA is a mere foil. Do you intend to develop her character further? Other than being a psychiatrist and friend, what is her emotional investment in this play?

--Do we get to see the father at all, or will he be absent all throughout the play? If you intend to work him in, he should make an appearance as early as possible, in order to balance your orchestration of characters.

Overall, your point of attack is good and your dialogue is also excellent.

I very much look forward to the completion of your work.

Only when you proofread your work does it become a precious gem.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks: _WFTH_ by Yvonne

Hello Yvonne!

Your play is very refreshing and very intriguing.

My comments:

--Develop the first scene completely. Until you do so, your play will proceed with fits and starts.
--Page 5, End of Page: Marlon's dialogue is missing.
--Page 6, Third to Last Line: Is one X missing? Since your play is not yet fully written I have no idea what these Xs mean. Are these literally dialogue Xs or are they variables for something you still have not decided on?
--Page 7, Line 3: Are two Xs missing? The reader will tend to view all this as a cryptic puzzle.
--Page 8, Top of Page: Marlon's dialogue is missing.
--Settings are not clear. By Page 8, Ana should already be under arrest and Marlon should already be working deep into the case--this is what will propel your play forward rather than everyone waiting in agony for things to happen.
--Thrust your characters and their premise in the faces of your audiences. They will not know what is going on if, well into the scenes, they still do not know who the characters are and why they are there. 

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _The Book of Mothers_ by Eleanor

Hello Eleanor!

You have a wonderful beginning for an interesting, feminist play. I wish you the stamina to carry the whole thing through.

Here are my comments:

--Scene One, Line 7: Unless your male character is offbeat, I find it inappropriate that he volunteers to tell someone about his wife's pregnancy. It is usually the woman who hogs that privilege. As a general rule men do not announce their wife's pregnancy to anyone because, psychologically: 1) he has a subliminal sense of guilt about the pregnancy; 2) he will initially be in denial because of the concomitant responsibilities implied by the pregnancy;  3) he will subconsciously ask himself whether he will make a good father; and 4) it is another goodbye to a comfortable, predictable life, the first goodbye being to bachelorhood and the second goodbye to being only a husband and not yet a father.
--When you write a play, you tend to think in terms of scenes you like; this will result in a disjointed play. Write the first scene as thoroughly as you can with your premise constantly in mind--afterward, allow the play to write itself from there without having to conform to the zinger lines and scenes that play themselves in your mind.
--This is the kind of play that hinges on the right balance and orchestration of characters. Otherwise it is better written as a complex monologue that employs supporting roles that revolve like satellites round a single protagonist.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: Untitled by Eve

Hello Eve!

The draft you submitted promises to be an intense, emotional drama.

Here are my comments:

--It is interesting that in all the four scenes that you wrote so far, there is a box-like item that represents death and life: a coffin, a box on a trolley, a cardboard box of discarded treasures, and a TV set.
--Avoid cinematic treatment. Did you make a makeshift model of your stage? That is meant precisely to prevent cinematic treatment, by forcing you to visualize the action on your makeshift model.
--Avoid very short scenes. Why are short scenes unfair to the performer? Because he cannot step onstage and adequately develop emotional truth in a trice. By the time he achieves truth you are already calling a blackout and a scene change.

I look forward to the completion of this work.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: "Duet" by Wisely

Hello Wisely!

Your manuscript is a complete vignette in itself.

Here are my comments:

--The play came out as a vignette rather than as a one-act play because the subject matter, although charming and successfully engaging, can go no further once the act of consummation is over.
--You have an excellent ear for dialogue. Develop it.
--Avoid cinematic treatment. Remember that you are writing for the stage.
--Do not write for a school audience.
--Discipline yourself to write longer pieces with more depth. Go for the one-act play, for starters. Vignettes are mere curtain-raisers or entre'-act fare. Write not only for yourself and people your age but for a wider audience range as well. You can do this and rivet your audience even if your characters are young--as young as the playwright or even younger--as was done by Rumer Godden in Battle of the Villa Fiorita. Ask yourself, what makes a play about young characters come across to the world as mature work?

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: Untitled by Wisely

Hello Wisely!

You submitted an interesting beginning for a play.

Here are my comments based on what I read:

--As I advised everyone during the workshop, try to avoid writing dialogue in terms of questions and answers. A character speaks because he NEEDS to, not because he wants information or wants to give it.
--The entrance of a new character should never be employed simply to provide exposition either for the audience or for the characters who are already onstage.
--Your pair begins with two pairs of characters with apparently two different sets of problems. It is not yet clear to me whether the two pairs of characters and their problems will illustrate one premise or two premises.
--I will not discourage you from pursuing the theme of sexual experience or exploration. A writer really learns from trial and error. Let me just mention here that seasoned playwrigtss like Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill have tackled the subject matter in the light of the psychology of Sigmund Freud, but some of their works come across as intellectually immature.

Keep on writing. I will be there and guide you through it all.

We marvel at writers' recorded experiences and insights, but every writer has secrets he will never put into words and that he will take with him to the grave.

Mens Sana In Corpore Sano

Do not avoid activities associated with mesomorphs. Take up a sport, exercise daily, or go regularly to gym. A healthy body promotes a healthy mind--one that you need to continue producing creative works.

Never dash off a poem or a painting and attribute them to flashes of inspiration. Every work you create, no matter how long or how short, must be well thought out and laid down as perfectly as possible. In a manner of speaking, every work should not only contain the esthetic foundation and philosophical spine of your oeuvre, it should also contain the entire essence of your life from your birth to the present time.

When a writer does not articulate his thoughts in written words, his mind explodes.

Every epic novel begins with a single sentence, and that is what you should dare to write.

When not writing, read.

Never go with cardboard or plastic folders for your personal use. Your creative writing is not for an office or school, and you deserve better than those.

Know this, that a writer's voice is always heard, even if the whole world shuns him.

Old athletes can be replaced by young athletes, but old artists cannot be replaced by young artists.

Be able to distinguish between a theater piece and a play.

The former is visual art, the latter literature.

Stainless steel pen nibs are wonderful. They outlive their users and last for generations.

Writing and painting are seasonal activities for many, so do not get distraught during the times that you are unable to do either or both.

A fountain pen is a magic wand and can be used as such, other than for writing.

Be thankful to be a playwright. You will tend to outlive directors and performers due to the comparatively minimal physical stress your work demands.

It is more productive to write and to paint than to sulk and to play solitaire.

Every writer obsessed with psychology discovers words within words.

Always master yourself, your subject matter, your medium, and your audience--in that particular order.

To improve your penmanship, think word by word as you write rather than of an entire sentence or paragraph.

Before writing, consider the entire sentence or paragraph, then descend from the macroscopic to the microscopic level.

Since a playwright is a thinker of society, he/she must always be inclusive and never exclusive.

If your readers cannot comprehend your first few sentences, they will read no further and abandon you.

We write and we paint to partially describe, with each work, the dream life that we have, hoping to complete its description with our oeuvre before we die, and hoping that it will be a good legacy to leave to those who can step back and comprehend all of it in its entirety.

When writing a play, don't just write. Visualize.

A vision is nothing if it is not put into words or pictures.

Writing from The Heart Workshop For TheatreWorks Singapore (May 29 - June 4, 2017)

https://www.facebook.com/pg/tHEATREwORKS.Sg/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1943590879221429

Never write, rewrite, or revise a play before bedtime. It will give you insomnia

It is always difficult to rewrite and revise a play because, in doing so, you go through all of the emotions in the play all over again.

A playwright must always write from a state of emotion, because emotion is the foundation of dramatic dialogue.

That is why in a workshop, after an emotional truth exercise, I immediately lead the participants into a writing session.

Everyone who is prone to road rage should try it. It is an effective way of taking emotion to a higher level by means of the defense mechanism sublimation.

The writing on the wall can always be revised.

When inflamed with anger and you want to calm down, write with a blue pen.

The literal has no meaning until you look beyond it.

A writer without passion is a beautiful kite without wind.

There is nothing like black ink, especially very black ink, though you should keep other colors in reserve for stimulus and for variety.

Always have a notebook on hand to write your random thoughts and ideas in, rather than hope they come back when you need them. They never will come back. They are all brought about by historicity, the time, the place you are in, and what you are feeling at the moment. Like water passing under a bridge, those thoughts and ideas will never be the same even if they occur to you again.

Like the only way to enjoy painting, the only way to enjoy writing is to not do one project after another.

It is also the only way to enjoy good chocolate.

There is no such thing as forgetting a dream. When you wake up and cannot recall the narrative and the imagery, first inspect how you are FEELING, for that is always the key to every dream. It is the first message that your psyche sends you in the dream state--and sometimes it is the only message.

Go with the feeling. Write a poem or three-paragraph story WITHOUT CONSCIOUSLY AUTHORING ANYTHING SENSIBLE AND JUST LETTING THE WORDS FLOW. What you have written is a variation of your dream, and can be interpreted as such.

And this is, as a mater of fact, how many great works begin.

Again, a reminder to use mahjong tiles or building blocks to create a model of your stage space as you are writing your play. Keep the structure on your writing desk until you finish writing your play. You may of course make changes and adjustments to your stage as you continue writing.

The model stage prevents you from thinking in terms of cut-to-cuts and close-ups, and compels you to think instead of entrances and exits, upstage, center stage, downstage, stage left, stage right, diagonals, cycloramas (if you want one), and what is hidden backstage and in the wings.

Don't just develop one talent--develop two or more. You will find that they feed each other.

Draw a person as best you can. Note that your skill in anatomy as an artist is always the equivalent of your perception of character when you write about a person.

If your literary depiction of a person is shallow or sketchy, try developing your drawing skills in anatomy. Begin with the skeletal system, and, when you have mastered that, progress to the muscular system. Be mindful of light, shadow, and three-dimensional rendition (a.k.a. "roundness").

Afterward, write about a person and note the improvement in your psychological understanding of that person.

It's all about powers of observation. And if you tell me that you are not interested in drawing human beings, why should I believe you when you say that you are interested in writing about them?

Write to change a reader's life, not a reader's mind, and know the difference between the two.

After writing and polishing your work, never ask yourself how it would come out had you done it another way. Your what-if work will not only lack spontaneity, it will also come out as over-written.

The FIRST version that emerges from your psyche will always be the most truthful one.

Any attempts to redo it will be your subconscious, defense mechanisms' efforts to disguise truth.

Tony Perez's Art of War: Like an arrow in a quiver, keep silent until you need to be used.

A hundred years from now, who will care what your particular preferences were?

Fear is always a herald of the new.

A constant lack of clarity in your works is always an indication that you fear not having enough depth, and that you would rather that your works be misunderstood than be judged as being trite.

Shake off that fear. Everything you say is important because no other writer will ever say it the way you can and the way you do.

An artist finds solitude even in companionship.

Obsessive-compulsive writers believe they are not worthy of writing in beautiful and expensive notebooks.

Know that it is not the perfection of your penmanship that counts but the quality of your thoughts.

When uncertain as to what you should paint, place your canvas upright at the base of a tree. The shadows of branches and leaves will fall on the canvas and suggest visual images.

When uncertain as to what you should write, sit in front of a tree, look up at its branches and leaves, and contemplate their patterns. Look down at your notebook and go with the first association that comes to your mind.

An Exercise In Developing Dialogue

Record a normal conversation. Transcribe it on paper if necessary.

1) What is the objective of each person in the conversation?

2) Mark the twists and changes that each person in the conversation takes.

Now REWRITE the conversation as dialogue in a play, keeping in mind that the dialogue in every scene in a play must push the premise forward.

3) After deciding what the premise of each person in the conversation is, DELETE all irrelevant passages from the conversation.

4) Rewrite the conversation so that each line pushes its speaker's premise. Be aware of dramatic economy and cross out everything superfluous, i.e., any idea that has already been articulated.

5) Now read through the rewritten conversation. Do emotions play a role in the conversation? If they do, EXAGGERATE each emotion--merely as an exercise--in the conversation.

Reread your work. You have just written a passage of dialogue.

Write and paint as though there's no tomorrow.

Good literature is a magnifying lens of reality.

To every creative and observant person, each day brings at least three pleasant surprises--and most especially to every artist, for an artist is not an artist if nothing surprises him any longer.

At the end of each day, recall and reflect on your three pleasant surprises.

Write and paint not to sell but to change the lives of others.

When you write and when you paint, ask yourself if your work has value not only to yourself and to your country but also to the rest of the world.

Know that "self-expression" is a grade-school and high-school rationale that artistic maturity and evolution always leave that behind.

Whenever you write something, you leave a piece of yourself on what you wrote on.

Thank God that you are infinite, and, because you are infinite, you are inexhaustible.

Write a portrait, draw a face description.

A writer never rises in the morning and wonders what the day will bring him.

To the extent that it is possible, a writer authors his day.

And he succeeds in doing so especially if he has mastered lucid dreaming.

Even pornography must have a thought-out and effective narrative.

There is no real difference between composition in painting and composition in creative writing, that its why it is beneficial to you to practice both.

To infuse your work with dramatic urgency, write your story not from the beginning but from the middle, then develop and push it forward WITHOUT resorting to flashbacks.

Always write for readers who are 30 years old and above. Your work then becomes truly timeless.

The artist who becomes truly immortal will always be the artist who takes pride in aging.

Write from your heart, never from your producer's or your publisher's cash register.

Every writer has a phenomenological frame of reference, but he/she must consider his audience's general frames of reference at all times. Otherwise he/she will be terribly misunderstood, and, when this occurs, it is always the writer's fault because he/she communicated first.

The artist who exercises true powers of observation is seldom engrossed with his gadgets, for he is constantly attuned to the world without and to the world within.

It's Love

Go through an entire day with the mindset that you love everything--everyone you see, everything you do, everyone you meet.

At the end of the day, write your insights in your notebook.

What's In A Name?

Choose a name you've seldom encountered, preferably one you cannot associate with a real person. For example, "Corinne" or "Maksim", whatever your gender.

On a day and a night that you are mostly alone, use that name for yourself, going about your day and your night as though that were indeed your name.

You will find, among other things, that:

--You will have a different color sense.
--You will develop different preferences for food.
--Your penmanship will change.
--Your behavior will also change.

This is, actually, the process of "possession". And what is a writer, after all, but a person being possessed by the current character he or she is writing about?

Note: Heighten your powers of observation during this exercise, and always in the service of creative writing, rather than merely going through the experience just for fun.

Purple is a complex color because it is a tertiary comprised of a myriad of mixes, not just blue and red. That is why, very often, no two pieces of purple clothing, bought separately, match. There will almost always be a clash of tints, hues, and shades.

See how the color purple applies to your sentences in a paragraph.

Be and become an artist, and that is good enough for the present and for posterity. You don't even have to be popular or highly acclaimed.

Being and becoming. Know those words and their meanings well.