Month: March 2016

A picture is worth a thousand words…

~ Meg ~ 30 Comments

Finding the inspiration to write.

New writers, experienced writers, amateur or professional —meaning you actually get paid for this stuff, at some point, will struggle to find something to write about. Even non-fiction writers may wrestle with finding new ways to express themselves so that their writing doesn’t become stale or monotonous. And yet, we do write on. Writers have unique ways of working through the times we get stuck and can’t move forward.

I am a very visual person. Even while I write, I am imagining the scene as if it is a film rolling in my head. I cast actors in the roles of all my characters, even minor ones. I’ve drawn the layouts of houses and other buildings, charted maps of my fictional locations and collected photos and images for all of it on Pinterest boards for each project. I’ve kept my ongoing project boards private, but you are welcome to check out the public ones here.

So because I like having a visual stimulus, I often use art as an inspiration to write.

Finding beautiful things to gaze upon does not require a trip to an art museum. Although, that’s not a bad way to idle away an afternoon. Speaking of Pinterest, they have an entire category dedicated to art. There you will find not only images of major works of art but also those of unknown and amateur artists, which are no less compelling.

How about street art? Do you live in or near a city or town that supports and/or encourages street art? Philadelphia has a fantastic Murals Art project.

context-philadelphia-street-art-1

Check out their website for more photos here.

Seriously, don’t you feel a story just begging to be written about some of those pieces of art? Go write one! There are street art photo tours online from different cities around the world. I encourage you to check them out.

Have you heard about the book Beauty In Decay: The Art of Urban Exploration? You can find it on Amazon. It is a stunning photographic collection of abandoned buildings accompanied by poetic text. Tell me that isn’t fuel for the fire of storytelling. What happened here? Who lived there? Why did everyone leave? Some images can be viewed online if you don’t want to shell out the $35 for the book.

Lastly, let me share a few of my favorite images, ones that have conjured ideas for writing. The header image is “The Grey Tree” by Piet Mondrian. I stared at that image on and off while writing a winter scene. It’s so stark and cold. And I love that you can see the brush strokes. It speaks of darkness, of cold, of death….

Or how about a masterpiece? Van Gogh’s Sunflowers? Monet’s Garden at Giverny? Picasso’s Guernica?


And I’m just dying to write something based on the sculptures by Matteo Pugliese. I won’t hijack an image here but I urge you to check out his work at MatteoPugliese.com. His bronze figures emerge from the walls like human forms escaping imprisonment from life in the second dimension. I’m telling you…

While you’re at it, explore the art and photography blogs here on WordPress. Some of the images are amazing. I follow a couple of bloggers who regularly post some fabulous images for the daily and weekly photo challenges they participate in. Stop and stare at them for a while. Based on what you see, imagine what happens next. Or ask yourself, what just happened here? After all the root word for imagine is image! I hope these suggestions help you find some inspiration. Happy writing my friends!

Loose Cannon

~ Meg ~ 21 Comments

Week 12 in the Year of Drinking Adventurously!  Cask conditioned Ales.

For my adventure this week, I drank Heavy Seas Brewing Company’sheavyseas_banner Loose Cannon on cask.  This is not a beer you find at the supermarket or the beer distributor.  A cask conditioned ale is only found on tap at a pub or restaurant.  This is a very cool thing, people!  Imagine having fresh beer, full of flavor, not force carbonated, poured from a wooden cask via gravity, the way a pub owner would have served you in the days before mass-produced beer.  Oh, and it’s not ice cold, either.  Say what, now?

First of all, the casks:

Remember the post about bourbon barrel aged beer?  How brewers are using discarded bourbon barrels to age a Belgian Tripel, for example?  The barrel actually adds flavor to the brew.  Heavy Seas uses not just one type of barrel to condition the ale.  From their website:  “In our collection of casks, we possess 11 wooden barrels. These barrels vary in age and make: American or European oak, toasted or untoasted wood, converted from wine or whiskey barrels. Wooden casks like these bring history and flavor nuances to the beer.”

The way it’s conditioned:

Before the ale has been filtered, carbonated, or kegged, it gets siphoned into a cask.  The casks are stored in a ‘cellar’ for a time, allowing the yeast to settle to the bottom.

The way it’s served:

At cellar temperature, which is maybe in the 50-degree range, cool but not cold.  But serving at that temperature doesn’t numb your taste buds and all the flavors can come through. Speaking of flavors, the Loose Cannon is an IPA (India Pale Ale).   It isn’t really bitter like some IPAs but has a little hint of grapefruit and pine that ease up the hoppy-ness.

I would love to tell you that I sat at a several hundred-year-old public house having an Imperial Pint with a crowd of rowdy patrons, cheering for the local football club (and by football, I mean soccer my American friends…) but alas I sat in an anonymous sports bar that just happens to have an incredible beer selection.  So I sipped my Loose Cannon while watching multiple athletic competitions on 60 TVs.  And it wasn’t even basketball.  Sigh…

Oh, and in case you were wondering?  Of my five brackets, two of them are still ranked in the top half of all brackets in the challenges I entered!  Not too shabby!  Go Villanova!!!

Make sure to visit Lula and see what she drank this week!

A-Z blogging challenge

~ Meg ~ 45 Comments

I am participating in the April A to Z challenge. Each day in April, with the exception of Sunday, the post will sequentially follow the letters of the alphabet.  Today is the day to reveal our theme for the month. Mine is Limerick Lunacy!

I am going to challenge myself to compose a limerick each day.  If I succeed, I should have enough for a book! Ha! I hope you don’t get sick of them.  I will try to vary the subject matter from serious to silly and everything in between.  And when I’m done, I’ll never write another limerick again! (Maybe)