An idea that has helped me to be more creative is from the book, School is Not a Four Letter Word by Anne Johnson. Occasionally, when I need a "retreat for one," I take a blank sheet of paper and entitle it "Brilliant Ideas for Things I Could Write." I write down every idea that comes, including simple images that pop into my mind. This done, I can forget about them and go back to my current project. When I finish, I take out the list of ideas, and turn them upside down and inside out and really look at them.

This technique keeps me from being distracted by brilliant ideas when I don't have time to focus on them, creates excitement, and keeps me supplied with a steady stream of ideas so I never face a blank page with a blank brain.

Recently, I was about to finish my third manuscript when the disk I stored it on wouldn't open. Every time I tried to open it, my computer froze. I hadn't been saving the project to the hard drive because my computer is old and fussy and I couldn't depend on it. The upshot is that I lost over 180 pages. When I started to replace it, I realized that I hadn't saved my research, either. In other words, I lost writing ground this month, but I haven't given up. I'm still plugging away.

I hope the rest of you are writing and having better luck than I am. I also hope you'll all learn a lesson from this and save everything! Save all your research. Save your manuscripts—in two places!

My mom always called Midway, Utah, "peaceful" and "calming," but I hated the quiet calm, the big, empty fields stretching all around the tiny brick house, and the noticeable lack of TV, Internet, and civilization. About the only thing there is to do there is read.

So I read. It was in the same, depressingly brown room with dead butterflies framed and tacked to the walls that I first decided I wanted to be a writer. I slept here year after year, plotting dreams in the quiet of it all, and reading books to ignore my e-mail-less life.

The lights began to flicker, then went out completely. Not only did I not have a computer, I didn't even have electricity.

"Well," I told my stuffed bear/best furry friend, Sciocco, "we can sit here being depressed or we can take a walk." Sciocco stared at me with a look that said he was staying there.

"Yeah, I wish I could too," I told him before I kissed him on his fuzzy little head. "Be back soon. Don't touch my licorice!" Bears are sneaky like that; they stay behind to eat all your candy and blame it on your sister.

I left my family panicking over the darkness and their ruined Hearts game. My feet carried me down the long driveway and through the weeds beside the creek. The quiet before was suffocating, but the silence now was beautiful, filled with rocks crunching together, weeds swishing past my legs, the creek tumbling on, and the moon shining down.

Before I realized it, stories were filling my head, ideas flooded my mind so quickly I knew they were not my own. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed my mom's number as fast as I could. "Mom! Get me some paper ready, I've had a vision!"

"You've done what?"

"Y'know, a vision...? For my writing...?"

"What writing?"

Evidently I had forgotten to fill my mother in on my newest venture of becoming a world-famous author (or at least, just locally known).

"Never mind, just get the paper."

I walked home as quickly as my bare feet would carry me to the welcoming silence of a now-lit house, grabbed my paper and began to write. But not before kneeling down and thanking Heavenly Father for all the things He's given me and for the ideas that came from my retreat for one.