advice Archives - From the Write Side

A Midsummer’s Madness

Oh, how quickly the days speed by! It's already July and I'm writing like crazy...two novels completed, another in the R and D stage. Yes, writers do research and development, we just don't refer to it as such! Had the opportunity to visit the Ohio History Center to read up on Quakers in southern Ohio and their involvement with the Underground Railroad movement in the first half of the nineteenth century. What a fascinating deep dive into that period. I learned so much and still [...]

By irvinjgdm|2023-06-30T17:58:20+00:00June 30th, 2023|Blog|0 Comments

Find Your Summer Retreat

Because it's summer... Because you deserve to find joy... Because the world is truly "too much with us" these days... Find a place where you can retreat from the stress, pressure, cares, sorrows, a place where you feel your own life thrumming through your body. Savor the land and the sky, the mountains and the water. Inhale the fragrance of lilac, rose, and new-mown grass. Open every sense to the pleasure of residing in the moment and allow that peace to heal, if only for [...]

By irvinjgdm|2023-05-31T16:34:13+00:00May 31st, 2023|Blog|0 Comments

Are You a Word Warrior?

The arrival of May signals a change in the tempo of growing things. The garden beds warm, seeds germinate, the pond and prairie hum with exuberant life. A new set of goslings in the neighborhood delight with their fuzzy bodies as they follow their tribe across the lawns and into the water. While the young ones practice swimming, their parents, ever vigilant, remain on guard to protest the incursion of dogs off leash, eager to prove their hunting skills, or fend off hawks that swoop [...]

By irvinjgdm|2023-04-30T17:33:46+00:00April 30th, 2023|Blog|0 Comments

If It’s Spring, It’s Time to Clean…

Spring cleaning...a chore or a pleasure? A time to restore or a time to clear out the old nest and weave a new one? The birds frequenting my backyard have no trouble doing the work, but we humans often need a nudge. Over the past two months, I've evaluated the incredible accumulation of 'stuff' in our drawers and closets, weighing what I have to have and what I can live without. Only makes sense to do the same with the clutter of my writing life. [...]

By irvinjgdm|2023-03-31T17:26:34+00:00March 31st, 2023|Blog|0 Comments

Marching Orders

You ever have one of those days when you swear the universe is sending smoke signals but you just can't read them? Yeah. I had one yesterday, its residue strong enough to push me to write about it today. I was preparing to leave for an evening of non-fiction readings by two local authors at the newest event sponsored by the Springboro Historical Society -- Reading Between the Wines -- where I serve as facilitator. I have the honor of introducing the readers for the [...]

By irvinjgdm|2023-03-01T19:44:45+00:00March 1st, 2023|Blog|0 Comments

Digging Myself Up

No way to sugarcoat this truth, for me personally, it's been a shitty summer. Three rounds of antibiotics for various unusual infections followed by a Mohs procedure (www.skincancer.org/skin-cancer-information/mohs-surgery) for skin cancer that ended up costing me most of my left nostril and resulted in complicated facial reconstruction, which is not over yet. If my last name were Scrooge, I'd scream Bah, humbug! The combination of these events entombed me in a very dark hole. I've been digging myself up ever since. For a flaming [...]

By irvinjgdm|2022-07-31T17:04:33+00:00July 31st, 2022|contemplative, Essays, inspirational, motivational, philosophical|0 Comments

July Blog: Sometimes I Just Want To Run Away…

READY? What's that old line about "the world being too much with us"? Sometimes the obstacles laid along the road create a wall too high to scale. Sometimes they force us to confront truths we would rather avoid. If you're a little like me, maybe they cause you to contemplate, if only for a moment, running away, and summer provides the opportune moment to try a faux escape. After all, it's July, summer's highpoint in the northern hemisphere. In this month of heat, humidity, and [...]

By irvinjgdm|2022-06-30T15:36:54+00:00June 30th, 2022|Essays|0 Comments

July 2022 Author of the Month: TONYA MITCHELL

July is sizzling and so is A FEIGNED MADNESS, the historical fiction debut novel of this month's featured author Tonya Mitchell. The novel tells the story of undercover reporter Nellie Bly’s ten harrowing days inside a women’s insane asylum in 1887. Mitchell has a degree in journalism from Indiana University. Her short fiction has appeared in a variety of publications, including The Copperfield Review and Glimmer and Other Stories. Our author confesses to being an Anglophile with a particular fascination for all things Victorian. She [...]

By irvinjgdm|2022-06-30T15:18:42+00:00June 30th, 2022|Author of the Month|0 Comments

Don’t Stop Believing

As I write this note, the two-inch snowfall melts outside the window, and the weatherman predicts temps in the twenties tonight. I have covered all my tender peas, lettuce, and spinach, but my heart quails at the prospect of losing blossoms on the tulip pear or on the pansies in the window box. Still, beneath the coverlet of white, spring trembles, preparing to begin again the rites of renewal and growth. And then that song plays in my head..."Don't stop believin..." I step away for [...]

By irvinjgdm|2021-05-01T23:13:23+00:00May 1st, 2021|Essays, Uncategorized|0 Comments

How I Lost My Voice…And Found It Again

The day, the hour, the moment muteness descended on my writing voice crouches in the deepest corner of my heart, waiting to pounce at unexpected times. As my son's birthday, May 27, approaches, I feel the memory uncurling, preparing to leap, determined to remind me that wounds can be dressed but some scars never heal. Dayton Children’s Hospital, September, 1973. 11:00 a.m. A doctor I do not know explodes from his office, lifts my three-month old infant from my grasp and swings him in the [...]

By irvinjgdm|2016-05-13T14:28:09+00:00May 13th, 2016|Essays, inspirational, motivational|1 Comment