If I don’t have paper handy, I might type notes into my phone or record myself talking so that I don’t lose the language or the idea.

I’ve found it’s best not to be too finicky about the conditions.

Specifics are “sticky.” They’re like little burrs that attach to the reader and hold on. Don’t we all carry images, lines, snippets of dialogue, and bits of description from books we’ve read? Some memorable details have lived in my head for decades, even though the characters’ names, plot points, poem titles, or even authors’ names may have long ag

I’ve found that anything that applies to writing also applies to life. Problem-solving is a creative act. Conversations are creative. Parenting is creative. Falling in love, leaving your job, changing your mind—all creative acts. Creativity isn’t just about making art.

Taking care of yourself is taking care of your creativity. Taking care of yourself as a whole human being is taking care of the writer in you.

With my memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, I wrote the vignettes one by one and later assembled them into a structure that felt intuitively right to me.

Take a walk or a drive. Book a window seat on a plane. Sit outside—in your backyard, on a park bench, at a café. Or make sure your writing desk (or reading chair) is next to a window with an appealing view. Take notes as you move through your day, or imagine what the speaker, narrator, or character might hear, smell, taste, or touch: the birds chit

And if one cannot make a living at writing, then writing is freed from the responsibility of supporting us. We choose to do it anyway.

“Paying attention” is a metaphor in itself: attention a form of currency we pay to things we value. We pay with our time, our energy, our selves. Any artistic practice requires this kind of investment.