Welcoming reexamination is a useful skill to cultivate not only in making art but in navigating life. It provides practice in embracing, rather than fearing, change.

December is the ideal month to take a second look at where you’ve been.

Growth is an erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back.

But once you’ve retrieved the pieces of your story, laying them out doesn’t automatically lead to a flow of thoughtfully expressed words. You need to reflect - you are mining for the literary gold in your experience.

Retracing is review; tracing a thing back to its source. A process that poignantly dovetails with writing personal narrative.

Returning is what most often brings people to the page to write a difficult story from their life.

The words we choose shape the way we remember things.

Toni Morrison wrote, “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”

A big story from our life - that story that changes everything - aches for exposure.

What a joy to listen to yourself instead of others. You may rediscover, as I did, how much you enjoy your own company .

I write a lot about to reasons to write, but I don’t give enough attention to what we get from reading. And since we are reading less and skimming more, I’m concerned.

It takes an outside force for us to make things.

Are we artists if we aren’t generating new material?

I collect sentences and phrases like other people collect shells on the beach.

Writing is a craft and honing it takes time and practice. But breaking it down into small bits, and naming the parts, helps makes the process a little less frightening and, perhaps, a little less bitter.

Was it part of the gallery? An artist’s work in progress? Just a rusty old car?

Because I admire these tools of my trade, I spent this month hunting for powerful examples of what words can do for us… To honor them and shine a light on how hard they work.

Gathering in public places asks something different of us now.

We know the places we know sensorally - what they feel-smell-sound-look-and taste like. Place imprints on us and is a part of making us, us. For the places we ache for, we may have a sense that they could transform us into who we want to be.