Catalyst For A Series: My Unexpected “Aha!” Moment from The Blackwater Lightship

Photo Credit: Dark light… come shine in her lost heart tonight, taken on 26 November 2016 by Nikk: The Maniac Macrographer/Flickr/CC BY 2.0 I’ve talked quite a bit about inspiration on my blog. In this blog post I discuss how I believe inspiration is something you don’t sit around and wait for but go out and …

“A Veil of Tears”: Family Secrets and The Trickle-Down Effect in The Blackwater Lightship (2004)

***This post is part of the Adoring Angela Lansbury Blogathon, hosted by the Realweegiemidget Review blog. *** ***Some spoilers*** “It’s a veil of tears, Lily. A veil of tears” (Angela Lansbury, The Blackwater Lightship, 2004) Hallmark has very specific (and not always nice) associations for many of us. When we hear the word Hallmark, we think …

Writing as Vengeance

Photo Credit: A Tale of Two Cities, A Female Jacobin, Title-Page Vignette, 1870, Fred Barnard: Robert Ferrieux/Wikimedia Commons/PD Art (PD Old) “Writing a tale that seeks revenge, you’ll quickly see that tale as merely a list of hurts, which, when you get to the end of that list, is a list that may not interest …

Confessional Memoir: The Literary Selfie

Photo Credit: Maria Riva, daughter of Marlene Dietrich, who also wrote the biography/confessional memoir Marlene Dietrich: The Life, 1951, CBS Television: We Hope/Wikimedia Commons/PD US no notice "Artistic expression by itself is only a form of acting out emotions, not a way of working them through." – (Mate, p. 26) As most of my blog …

Strangers Working in Strange Lands

 Photo Credit: Freud with some of his followers. Otto Rank is standing behind Freud’s chair. 1922. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division: Prosopee/Wikimedia Commons/PD EU no author disclosure “[I]f we want to catch glimpses of the truths that govern human culture and behavior, we must open ourselves to the wisdom, no matter how surprising …

From Struggle Comes Creativity

Photo Credit: Struggle, Robert Demachy, 1904, gum bichromate photograph, originally appeared in Camera Work, No. 5, January 1904: Lexaxis7/Wikimedia Commons /PD US “[W]e are writers and make art out of our struggle…” (Nin, letter to Henry Miller, p. 114) Last month, I wrote in the transformative power of art. It’s not only trauma that art …

Déjà Vu Blogfest 2016: Hidden Influences

***This post is part of the Déjà Vu Blogfest 2016, hosted by author D. L. Hammons***    “Everybody comes into your life for a reason. There are no random personal relationships” (Dream Intuition, 2016, 3:04). A friend of mine, Charlotte Elea, who, in addition to tarot readings and dream work is also a writer, posted a …

Powerful Medicine

Photo Credit: Healing faery and male elephant seal, painting, Middle Path Café, Northern Lights Boulevard, Anchorage, Alaska, taken January 22, 2013: Wonderlane/Flickr/CC BY 2.0 “Story is powerful medicine.” (Craft, par. 3) I came across the article “Healing Through Writing” by Kathryn Craft not, I think, by accident. The idea that all art heals has been …