I look around my computer, my desk, around my house, around my life and see signs of disorder and it bothers me. Not only is it hard to find things, but I have piles of things that need to be attended to and stacks of stuff to sort and perhaps throw away and loads of files and programs I just haven’t gotten around to deleting yet. It always leaves me feeling like I am scrambling. I can never find stamps to mail out my letters and bills. My favorite running shirt is somewhere. I often forget the many correspondences or little tasks I meant to do because I don’t have them written down and if I do, that slip of paper has gone missing. All of this robs me of my peace.

by Mervyn Love

A character’s backstory is important whether you are writing a short story or a novel. With a short story it can be less in-depth than for a longer work, but it will raise your readers interest when you present them with a character they can believe in. In fact, that is the secret really: If YOU believe in the character, the chances are your readers will as well – and vice versa.

Is it true that what goes in, comes out?

I was doing some research recently and found some disturbing statistics. The average child watches 1,680 minutes of TV in a week. That same child spends 3.5 minutes a week in meaningful conversation with their parents. That child will spend 900 hours in school a year. And that child will watch 1500 hours of television in a year.

I have made no secret of my fear of flying. I don’t hate airplanes or traveling. At all. I do hate getting into a cylinder made of welded together pieces of metal and glass and then going up 33,000 miles in the air while traveling at 535 mph with half the cylinder full of incredibly flammable material. This scenario bothers me because I have absolutely no control of the situation, and it seems quite dangerous. Maybe it wouldn’t bother me if this cylinder didn’t jump and jolt in the air and seem like at any moment it would tear apart at a several welded seams. Now you can see why it is not hard for me to feel like death is one stray bird or one big bump away.

by M.E. Haywood

For the past several years, at least five, I have been blissfully uninterested and ignorant of the goings on in the world of reality television, largely because of its incredibly unrealistic nature. That is of course with the exception of the delightful program American Idol which I consider to be more of the variety or talent show genre. I mean nobody in the early 80’s was calling Star Search reality television but I digress.