Community In Spirit Forums

If you could live your life as a prayer or poem, which one would you choose? Why?

Imagine you are standing on the highest mountaintop in the world. Write about what you see ... what you hear ... how it makes you feel.

1. Interspiritual Today people around the world celebrate the second day of Kwanzaa. This seven-day African-American festival includes lighting a different color candle each day to represent one of seven principles. On the second day of Kwanzaa, the leftmost red candle is lit in honor of Kujichagulia (koo-jee-chah-goo-LEE-ah) or Self- Determination. How does self-determination show up in your life as a writer? How do you persevere in the light of adversity? What can we learn from the determination and strength of our black brothers and sisters? 2. Experiential Choose a principle that you would like to guide and inform your writing. Maybe it's originality, or integrity. Light a candle in honor of that principle. Keep the candle burning as you journal about what the principle means to you as a writer. 3. Practical In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King says: "The road to hell is paved with adverbs." An adverb is defined as "a word or phrase that modifies or qualifies an adjective, verb, or other adverb or a word group, expressing a relation of place, time, circumstance, manner, cause, degree, etc. (e.g., gently, quite, then, there)." Remove all the adverbs from something you have written. See how well it reads without them. If you absolutely need to modify something you've written, see if you can use a stronger noun or verb.