Susan Haven

  • It’s Story Sunday

    This week’s prompts, from my favorite idea generator, diymfa.com/writer-igniter , were A Kindergarten Teacher, goes on her honeymoon alone. The prop is a filthy shirt. This is my weekly bad short story, based on Ray Bradbury’s challenge that you can’t write 52 bad short stories. Island Time As she settled into the window seat of…

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  • Seven on a Saturday

    So, I needed a blog theme for Saturday, and therefore, instead of Five on a Friday, here are 7 on a Saturday. Some links that I absorbed this week: This essay, about COVID quarantine, friendship and the way people come into our lives for a season. https://harpers.org/archive/2021/01/these-precious-days-ann-patchett-psilocybin-tom-hanks-sooki-raphael/ I love following @thelaminimalist on instagram. She is…

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  • Happy Friday. Or https://beachhouseair.blogspot.com/2018/11/three-kids-in-trench-coat.html Hard to believe we are halfway through the first month of 2021, and to quote someone on Twitter, I’m starting to believe 2021 is just 3 2020’s in a trench coat. But time is moving forward, as it is supposed to do, at least in the real world.  And in my…

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  • The Art of the Short Story

    To be human, one must have a story.  China Achebe Ray Bradbury, in his writing advice (Such as Zen and the Art of Writing, and various talks) prescribes new writers read a poem, an essay and a short story every day. For several years now, that has been my practice, with a short break here…

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  • Here at the Story Factory, we value quantity over quality. .  . More words, more hours, more stories. The goal is 52 stories at the end of the year. So far, we are on target. Which, I know, isn’t much to say at this point of the year, but on the other hand, this time…

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  • Tool Time Tuesday

    So, since it is Tuesday, and not Wednesday, as I originally thought when I woke up this morning, I thought I would take a tour through some of my tools. Let’s call it Tool Time Tuesday.  My go-to planner, until the past November, when I found the Wonderland 222, was the Rhodia Goalbook. For bullet…

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  • Monday Musings

    It’s not often that we get more than a few flurries here in central Texas, much less record breaking snow fall. But here we are, after getting almost 5 inches of snow. People who live in places with actual seasons are not usually fans of snow after the first romantic snow fall, but here where…

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  • It’s Story Sunday!

    Prompts this week were A Fashionista, becomes an overnight success, and the prop was a guitar pick. The Armani Jacket According to the YouTube page in front of me, there were three minutes remaining on my video upload. This was probably the biggest Vlog of my life, the one where I was announcing that I…

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  • Synchronicity

    syn·chro·nic·i·ty/ˌsiNGkrəˈnisədē/noun 1.the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.”such synchronicity is quite staggering” 2.another term for synchrony (sense 1). After finishing up Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way this past semester, I have been collecting bits of what she calls “synchronicity.” Maybe because this season I am obsessed with all things…

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  • Capture, Clarify, Control

    There seems to be, out in planning/productivity world, an almost cult like devotion to David Allen’s Getting Things Done. The book is frequently quoted in productivity blogs, podcasts and even in a book or two, with it’s friendly abbreviation, GTD. The subtitle is the art of stress-free productivity, so there is absolutely no question about…

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