Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:50:52 +0000 Weeds near a sidewalk, Seattle, www.carolineallen.com Imagine yourself as a field. Well, a clearing really. One one side a muddy expanse, leading to an area of long grass, abutting scrubby low-lying bushes whose branches intertwine like a spider's web. The grass is too tall to mow, and someone has run a tractor over it and it lays on its side like thick lime green hair.…

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:58:02 +0000 self portrait, acrylic on paper, 2007, www.carolineallen.com I have a good friend named Lisa. She doesn't watch movies much; she's often seeing blockbusters three years after they come out and commenting on them in conversation as if they were just released. It's very funny. I'd like to create a fiction character who does this. It's very endearing. It's something I love about her, this disconnect…

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:46:49 +0000 life drawing, www.carolineallen.com I have spent the past few days or weeks in a torpor. Is anything worth it? Finding it harder to write, harder to do my visual art. Finding it just plain hard. Beneath me, I feel a sucking undertow, a dark energy yanking at me like a persistent dog. I know this isn't just me. I know my psychic self well enough…

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:55:21 +0000 sketch of blues band, the tap, haverhill, ma A former writing student recently hired me to teach her how to be a writing coach. So much came up around how to do coaching well that I thought I'd blog about it. First, the process of coaching has its own internal integrity, an organic integrity. What this means is that to be a writing coach you…

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:57:49 +0000 Republic Square at night, Yerevan, Armenia, 2008, www.carolineallen.com I was sent recently to Yerevan in Armenia on a media development project for a nonprofit. My role on the project was to help several media outlets redesign their websites -- TV, radio, online magazines. There is so much to blog about from the experience of visiting and working in the former Soviet country that I don't…

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:06:09 +0000 Leaves in Costa Rica, www.carolineallen.com As I mentioned in an earlier blog, my friend Lisa and I camped in Maine recently. The campsite happened to be next to a feldspar quarry. Neither of us really knew this and we did not consciously choose the site because of it. We hiked separately up the small mountain that held the feldspar quarry. Lisa came back with a…

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:14:18 +0000 Life drawing class, 2008, www.carolineallen.com As a writing coach, I've worked with several women writers on memoir. Again and again, the following scenario happens. The writer submits a well-written chapter focused on one area of their life that had particular importance. Perhaps the chapter is on their only brother, with whom they've shared many events of epic proportion. Again and again, the writer writes these…

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 12:26:18 +0000 sunflower, amesbury, ma, 2008, www.carolineallen.com I keep coming across the theme of how women hide their intelligence as writers. Again and again this theme has come up with me and my own writing and with the clients I serve. Where are you hiding? That's the question I would ask every writer. What wisdom do you have that you're not showing in your writing? What truth…

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:50:03 +0000 Mystical Hands, Class for kindergartners, Providence, Rhode Island, September 2008 www.carolineallen.com You know you want to write a memoir or novel. It's in there, you can feel it, but you haven't done anything about it. Oh yes, in high school, in college and in your 20s, you did some writing. Short stories mostly. They were brilliant. They had such glowing possibilities. You felt your soul…

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 15:02:01 +0000 Moon, from the Tarot Card Series, acrylic on canvas board, 8x10, www.carolineallen.com I am painting a series of the tarot cards in my studio. For a month, I painted three or four cards and the painting was conventional (well as conventional as I'm capable of), and the only quirkinesses were in certain heads tilted in odd ways, shoulders hunched in little girl consternation, a gold…