Writings by Diane

Finding inspiration can be fun and exciting—sustaining motivation from that inspiration is when it becomes tricky. The first time I saw the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly , I was immediately touched by the sheer determination of Jean-Dominque Bauby. The movie chronicled this man going through an awful health crisis (a stroke that leads to locked-in syndrome ) and horrendous physical therapy challenges. He was trained on a way to communicate by way of blinking his left eye.  Through this new method, he was able to write his memoir by painstakingly spelling out the words one letter at a time. This fact has always fascinated me and I have used it as one of my motivators.  Sometimes I find myself not being as productive as I should be during my writing time. I let distractions have their hold on me. I then think of the image of Monsieur Bauby  lying in the hospital bed blinking furiously to create his work.  Here I am with all of my faculties, w...

Ever since I can remember, whenever I’m presented with a list of tasks to accomplish, I am prone to barrel ahead to get things done. I have the list in my mind, so there was no need to write down the exact things I was completing.  My opinion was why use up time for planning and list-making when these minutes can be used to just finish the job? Then, I saw something that changed my perspective. A few years ago I was watching Kimora Lee Simmons Life in the Fab Lane .  In the episode, Ms Simmons had a late night meeting about her clothing line.  If memory serves, I recall she made the announcement that she had many things to accomplish, including have dinner. Then, she proceeded to write this to do list on the palm of her hand, including the item get something to eat! I was fascinated that she wrote out that list. If it were up to me, I would keep these steps in my head. Then, I began to think of it another way. By her writing down the things on her biological Palm Pil...