The Most Interesting Thing: Writers Write--Poetry?

"Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."--Robert Frost 

As many of you know, the past six months of my life have been filled with turmoil--betrayal, loss, heartache, and change. Through all of this, I have struggled as a writer. True, I have a novel releasing in July and I was able to suck it up and successfully navigate the editorial process, but outside of that, I've not been able to get back into my writing groove.

With that said, I woke up this morning with a revelation: I am not only a novelist, I am also a poet. And what can a novelist do when her tumultuous emotions won't allow her to work on novels? She should write poetry!

So today I will buy a beautiful book of blank pages and I will spend this gorgeous summer filling those pages with ardent poems. 

The Most Interesting Thing: Problem Solving

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."
--Albert Einstein

E=MC???

Have you wrestled with a problem lately? I have. For the past few months, I've been pondering two major problems--mysteries--waiting to be solved. One is a lifelong health mystery. The other is a car dying mystery. Both undiagnosable by the so-called experts. I am happy to announce that last week both problems were solved by the use of inductive reasoning. In just one week, my health has improved dramatically and my car is starting consistently. Yay!!!

I've always loved problem solving. True confession: I was a member of my high school math team. But there's something way more fun to solve than math equations in our writing lives--the ubiquitous story problem.

We writers are often faced with story problems that we create ourselves. I love to brainstorm ideas on how to fix them. Sometimes the solutions are so simple. Just a minor tweak and voilà--story fixed! I find that solutions to story problems often arrive in those foggy moments of barely conscious, first thing in the morning. A different level of consciousness, as Mr. Einstein put it. 

How do you go about solving story problems? Any tips?