By Nikki Groom The pencil moves. Your thoughts flutter. The words come off the page like a movie of the mind. Everything flows. A black page appears. Your thoughts gone. The words disappear. Writer’s block begins. How can you reverse it? You try a break. Nothing. A walk. A game. A movie. People watching. Nothing […]
By Megan Standley Anger seems to be the only emotion that anyone feels nowadays. Whether it be from politics or a bad day. Anger, of course, can be a really good outlet for bottled up stress and bad thoughts, but it’s not as acceptable as emotions like sadness. So, say you need to have […]

Our favorite co-hosts Zoey Reynolds and Caitlin Dillon are back to discuss a few of their favorite things. Today on The Mochila Chat we talk about how to show empathy for another person when the writer does not know anything about the other person’s backstory and how a writer can make the readers feel the […]
By Megan Standley It’s time to go ahead and get that one emotion that no one wants to feel out of the way. That emotion is sadness. Everyone feels this emotion at some point in their lives and it isn’t something they want sticking around for long (unless you love to be sad). Even […]
By Megan Standley Emotions are key to any good story and poem and there are many ways to incorporate emotions into any type of writing. This blog will cover the emotion of happiness, how it affects the outcome of your writing, and how it can create a connection between you, your character, and especially the […]
By Megan Standley As we bring this wonderful tale of why music helps writing to a close, I’d like to spend at least this blog to mention more songs from other genres. You wouldn’t expect these songs to help with writing, but they actually do! I’d also like to just talk about how great […]
By, Megan Standley What else besides food and coffee goes along with writing? Music, of course! While it may surprise you, music and writing correspond with each other. A musician must write musical numbers if there is to be a song and a lyricist must write words to match. Of course, not everyone knows […]
By: Cassandra Robbins When asked to review something, a person can face the dilemma of balancing between what is nice to say and what needs to be said about a work. On one hand, if a person showers the first draft in compliments, they really aren’t doing the task they were given; but if […]
By: Cassie Robbins When it comes to self-edited work, some of us may be too lax with grammar and may not even correct the small stuff until the final drafts. It isn’t the fun stuff about writing, anyway. As EB White said, “writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.” Emily Dickinson […]
In the last post, I talked a little about political correctness but I think that it deserves far more attention than I gave it. As writers and contributors to the media, we all need to be conscious of what we put out there. Some of this is just plain common sense—and if it isn’t, there […]