I just finished producing, writing, and editing and 14-page annual report for NAMI-CT, an organization which serves support, education and policy for mental health populations. Here are the steps I took to produce an annual report that told their story.

1. Interview key leaders, volunteers, and donors about why they are involved in your organization
2. Craft a short story in a few paragraphs for each interview. Make sure you have photographs to go with each story. Either use ones on file or take fresh ones.
3. Write the welcome letter from your executive director in such a way where it highlights all events and what metrics they produced for your service area. Use a friendly, conversational tone as if writing a blog post. 
4. Edit all content submitted by board of directors, lists of donors in drop files that will go right to the graphic designer, financial statements in Excel files. 
5. Break down the areas your organization supports into sections and write a few paragraphs about major achievements that year for each section.
6. Make sure your designer understands your mission, your creative concept, and any tag lines  agreed upon by your executive director.

I'm available to consult, produce, write, and edit your next annual report. Click here to contact me.

Do you like poetry? Have you lost a friend to illness, accident, or suicide?

​I wrote Brooklyn’s Song a few years after losing a close friend to suicide. My friend was a talented poet and artist who suffered with manic depression. This novella is a quick but lovely read. Written in lyric free verse to sound like a teen’s journal entries, you will most likely re-read and highlight your favorite passages of poetry. I meant it as a companion to your soul as you heal from grief. The book will appear on Amazon in a few weeks. Hopefully, some time in early 2016. I originally wrote the story under another name and self-published it. But thanks to meeting with some literary agents and a book designer, I took their advice and decided to re-edit and redesign it. Subsequently, a new title came forth during this process. I will keep you posted on when and how you can order copies of Brooklyn’s Song. Go to my Books page for more information about it.

​Order it here!

I went to a gentle yoga class today after months of not practicing it. I thought I would never be able to catch up with the flow and do the poses but I surprised myself. I learned that if you breathe and slowly do the pose almost any body type can do it. Yoga is about finding flow and appreciating the moment as you find it. Slowly conforming one’s body into the pose and following your breath helps you enjoy yoga more. Like yoga, I practice writing slowly. I used to be a deadline-centered journalist. But when writing fiction and poetry, I slow down and focus on themes, language, characters, and pathos in the story. I first learned to edit while writing poetry. Good poetry takes multiple drafts to find the right words, to make meaning out of language. Now, when I write copy for a client or a feature story, I pull myself back and think about what fiction and poetry has taught me. I’m still learning to find flow in my writing practice, revising it with each writing project. I suppose we’re all just beginners. 

If you have a creative practice, tell me about it in the comments.