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Everyone has a shadow. Maybe this photo makes you think of your first awareness of your shadow as a child, how you hopped around trying to escape it, or pondered how it stretched and shrank but still followed you everywhere. Maybe this photo makes you consider your shadow self, in psychological or even spiritual terms--the part you might perceive as inferior, the part we deny, refuse, or project onto others. We all have one. Come out of the shadow.

What do you think about when you look at this image? Write about it.

There's a reason why famous writers tell aspiring writers to read. Here are four reasons why reading regularly and widely will strengthen your writing practice, and tips for how to make space for reading.

Writers don't have more time than non-writers--they make more space for writing in their lives. Here's some guidance to help you uncover what's really keeping you from the page.

Expressive writing is a great tool for easing stories out. Here is some guidance, in three steps, for how to make this kind of writing your lifeboat in rough waters.

It is six or so weeks ago that I entered clicking and sliding into the maze of Facebook. I have managed to set up that third profile. When it asked for my face, I was blank. My page sat that way, blank of face, until about a week ago when I clicked willy-nilly on something punctuated with many of my faces, my column of the Good God knows what—is it my story? Is it my private news feed? Is it my timeline? I’ve yet to understand...

Tell us about your home, your nest, your home base, real or ideal, imagined or remembered. Since we're all spending so much time at home these days, let's muse on what makes a home, or how we know we've arrived there, and why there's no place like it. And who is there with you? Maybe your home isn't a place, but a partner...

The stories that stay with us are the ones that made us feel connected to something or someone. If you want to write stories that last, Stacia Fleegal presents some points of connection to focus on developing.

Whether you are using your personal experiences and observations in memoir, short story, or poem form, you get to choose what you include. Shawna Ayoub Ainslie guides truth-tellers with three self-reflective questions to make choices in writing about their own lives a little easier to live with.

When I got to midtown and parked the car, I combed the sheet of newspaper, four pages, double sided. There it was, the story of a man who had bought a shoe store during hard economic times. One shoe store became two, then three, then twenty-five. A chain of shoe stores! The man had accumulated wealth, and had the means to help others—which he did. “During hard times, expand,” is what he was quoted as saying.

Remember being a child and stomping in mud puddles? Or playing kickball on the school playground, or building forts or snowmen, or fishing, or racing bikes, or making mud pies, or blowing bubbles? Remember childhood? Remember play? What do you think about when you look at this image? Write about it.