Where the Mind Sprocket staff writes about inspiration, communication, culture, storytelling, and more.
The Back Page is where the feet go up on the desk at the end of the day. It’s that good book with a mug of hot cocoa just before bed. It’s where we goof off after a hard day’s work. The Back Page is our blog.
Where we tell you about the things that have inspired us. We hope they’ll inspire you too!
If you’ve lived to the ‘age of reason’ as some call it (and if you’re visiting our blog, then that is a likely possibility) then you know that life is not all cookies and cream.
Life is a balance not of two things, but of everything. And that includes the stubbed toes, discovering a new band, […]
Maybe you’re already inspired, and maybe you have other sources to cure writer’s block and turn out reams of delicious prose. If that’s true, then it’s totally awesome!
But have you yet taken the time to come up with a title - perhaps one of the most loathed parts of the entire writing process?
Maybe you already […]
The object isn’t to be perfect. The goal isn’t to hold back until you’ve created something beyond reproach. I believe the opposite is true. Our birthright is to fail and to fail often, but to fail in search of something bigger than we can imagine. To do anything else is to waste it all.
- Seth […]
When I took a walk around my old, nearly abandoned elementary school with a friend, I was full of stories … stories that I didn’t even remember until I was physically walking around the place. I first noticed the smell of the paper mill smog that settled into the small valley where the school is. Then, […]
Our likes and dislikes say something about ourselves just as how we handle individual situations reveal pieces of our character.
Imagine yourself in comic strip form.
Try to picture yourself from an outsider’s view. Does this make you laugh? Now consider the time you threw a plate when you burnt the toast. We can […]
Are you an impatient writer that wants to “write a story, right now”? Need a plot in a hurry for this or that deadline? Writer’s block?
Consider looking over Georges Polti’s “Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations” or, as referenced in this article on Flemming Funch’s blog, “The 36 Plots” by Loren Miller.
Of course we know that plots are […]
Congratulations, you made it to Friday! And on Fridays, we share with you a website we frequent or something we’ve found recently while perusing the World Wide Web.
Do you love poetry, but haven’t found a decent website where you could simply absorb the art without loads of conspicuous advertisements? End your Google search for […]
Get to work!
Unfortunately, Inspiration does not come to us where we have firmly planted ourselves on the couch or whichever preferred location we have chosen. We have to do something about it. Inspiration wants to help you, she really does. But she’d rather meet you at your level, not at a couch […]
Looking for a little structure for your poetry? Try a pantoum, a poem consisting of 16 lines and four stanzas. There is no rhyming requirement for a pantoum, but there is a certain order that the lines go in:
Stanza 1 Line 1
Line 2
Line 3
Line 4
Stanza 2 Use Line 2 above as Line 5 here
[…]
My creativity
comes in
a direct flow
from my mother.
Her blood feeds
my body with
oxygen to breathe
and her words,
like breadth for my ears.
An umbilical cord once
attached us
before I was
strong enough
to be my own.
Now our
thoughts and
hearts
align
because I am borrowed
from her clay.
It seems that we are
always attached to
the other end of
our life support.
Sometimes the truth is
Not what you want it to be.
Is it ever what you expected?
No, probably not.
Are you okay with that?
Are we meant to create truth or
Are we meant to find it?
