- 19 hours ago
(NOTE: I love sharing guest posts about others’ creative journeys in this space, but no one else stepped up to the challenge this month. So this month’s blog post is by, tada, me.)
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When I first started my blog in 2018, I worked full time as a grant writer. Up to my neck in grant applications, word counts, and fundraising metrics, I just wanted an outlet to create. For better or worse, that creative urge often prompted me to want to illustrate some of my posts.
I loved working on those pen-and-paper creations. It left me relaxed and with an overall sense of well-being. And it got me wondering why.
(Maybe I'd like to be a cartoonist when I grow up, given my continued attempts at illustrations, like the two above. A cartoonist, or perhaps a songwriter.)
Anyway, when I found a piece on creating with pen-and-paper written by Ashley Roper in 2025 for a site called The Sense Hub, it resonated with me. It also provided possible answers to my question: Why do I get so jazzed about putting pen to paper?
Below is a link to Roper's piece in its entirety.
The piece focuses on handwriting, but I suspect it applies to other forms of creating with pen and paper (or baby canvases) as well, like sketching or practicing Zentangle.
Oh, in case you’re interested in seeing Roper’s list in its most succinct form, here you go:
Handwriting enhances memory and learning.
Writing by hand reduces stress and anxiety
Pen and paper boost creativity and problem-solving skills.
Handwriting improves focus and concentration.
Writing by hand helps you to express yourself authentically.
Pen and paper encourage mindfulness and self-reflection.
Handwriting creates a deeper connection to your work.
Pen and paper offer a break from screen time.
Handwriting can improve your fine motor skills.
Pen and paper offer a sense of accomplishment.
Handwriting can be a form of self-care.
Pen and paper facilitate better collaboration and communication.
Handwriting is a unique and personal expression of yourself.
If reading this post hasn't given you the urge to write a postcard or doodle for a while, no worries. (Take it from me. I chose my word of the year for the very purpose of not fretting over things that matter little.)
Then again, if reading this post has left you itching to get out a pen and something to write on, have at it. Consider it a form of self-care.
You’re welcome.
Until next time ~ happy creating! Jan
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P.S. Please, please reach out if you have an artistic pursuit you’d be willing to share as part of my ongoing Creativity Challenge. If you’re shy about the writing part, I can help. Or…say the word, and I’ll get the heck out of your way.
P.P.S. I've started participating in short-term FREE eBook giveaways to support other writers creating in similar genres to me. I'm talking about my fiction here, which I've taken to calling cozy-dark Southern mystery. Because some folks consider my fiction cozy and others think of it as suspense with a supernatural twist, I'm sharing links to giveaways for both cozy and suspense eBooks here. No pressure. But if you'd care to give some new writers a try, this is a great (FREE!!) way to do it.
Something strange happens when you plant a seed. You place it in the soil, cover it with dirt, give it water, and then you wait. A few days later a small green shoot breaks through the ground, and suddenly you realize something important: food does not begin at the grocery store. It begins with a seed, an idea, and patience. Watching that process unfold has changed the way I see the world.
Somewhere along the way, many of us lose touch with the simple act of being human—growing food, making things with our hands, and understanding where our daily life actually comes from. We became busy, productive, and efficient, but often disconnected from the basic rhythms that once guided human life.
Over the past five years, my husband Sam and I have been rediscovering those rhythms. Today we live on five acres in the bottom of the Snake River Canyon in southern Idaho. Here we are practicing what might best be described as modern homesteading—growing food, making things ourselves, and learning skills that reconnect us with how life used to work.
But our story didn’t begin here.
For the first fifty years of my life, home was Phoenix. Phoenix was where adulthood unfolded—where I worked, raised a family, and moved through the pace of a large city. Life there was busy and forward-moving, like it is for many people building careers and families.
Later, another chapter opened when Sam and I moved to a condo overlooking the lights of the Las Vegas Strip. For five years we lived above one of the most energetic places on earth. The city was always awake, always moving, always full of excitement.
During those years we traveled extensively. Travel has a way of expanding your perspective. You begin to notice that there are many ways to live. Some communities live quickly, surrounded by technology and constant motion. Others move at a slower pace, deeply connected to land, food, and tradition. At the time, I didn’t realize those experiences were preparing me for the next chapter.
Five years ago, we left Las Vegas and moved to our property here in southern Idaho. The shift was dramatic. Canyon walls and open skies replaced city lights. Instead of traffic and constant activity, we began to hear the quiet. And in that quiet, something unexpected began to happen.
We started growing food. At first it was simple—just learning how to plant a garden. But once you start growing food, it becomes much more than a hobby. You begin to understand food differently. It no longer begins in a store or a package. It begins with the decision to plant something. First comes the idea. Then you find the seeds. Then you ask the practical questions: When should it be planted? How much water does it need? What soil works best?
Once the seeds are in the ground, the most remarkable part begins. We watch our food grow. A tiny seed becomes a plant. A plant becomes nourishment. Eventually we harvest vegetables, herbs, and fruit that end up on our table. What we can’t eat immediately is preserved through canning or freeze-drying so it can feed us later in the year.
Gardening has changed our relationship with food completely. It has also led us to explore other ways of creating things we use every day. Our neighbors are beekeepers, so we buy honey directly from the hive next door. We make candles using local beeswax. We are learning how to make soap using tallow from local sources. Every project becomes another small step toward understanding how life used to work.
Because we are constantly experimenting and learning, we jokingly call our home Orrick University. This five-acre property has become our personal campus—a place where we can explore ideas about health, food, creativity, and what it really means to live intentionally. Through meditation, journaling, gardening, and creating things with our hands, we are slowly rediscovering parts of life that modern culture often forgets.
Creativity has become a daily part of our lives. A deep source of this creativity comes from the environment itself. Nature slows the mind down. When you work in a garden, watch seasons change, and see food grow from the soil, your perspective shifts. Life feels less rushed and more connected to something timeless.
This year I turned sixty. And surprisingly, this may be the most meaningful chapter of my life. Earlier chapters were about building a life—moving forward, meeting responsibilities, keeping up with the pace of the world. This chapter feels different. Now I am no longer running toward life or running away from it. I am simply living it. And through this process, something unexpected has become clear. In many ways, this chapter of life is about rediscovering what it means to be human again. To grow food. To cook real meals. To create things with your hands. To reflect.
Sam and I love how we’re reconnecting with the land that sustains us. After a lifetime that began in Phoenix, passed through the lights of Las Vegas, traveled across oceans and continents, and eventually landed here in southern Idaho, I find myself exactly where I need to be. Here, at Orrick University, learning every day how to be human again.
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Hello all! I’m Ellen, a creative who likes to write, draw (sometimes), take photos, and make quilts.
Writing. I decided when I was six that I wanted to be a writer. I had recently learned to read and I was transported by books. I wanted to be a person who wrote books that other people would want to read. Well, I never did write the Great American Novel, but I did get published.
I worked for several years in the 90s as a freelance writer, copyeditor, and proofreader for Gale Research (now Cengage Learning, Encyclopedia.com, etc.), which was based in Detroit and then the second largest reference publisher in the US. A friend from grad school connected me with one of their editors, and I wrote mostly pocket biographies for inclusion in reference books like Native American Tribes, Dictionary of Hispanic Biography, Contemporary Black Biography, and Women in World History.
It was and remains a big thrill to see my name in print. I have also had articles published in McCall’s Quilting and Quilter’s Home Magazine. Hands down, the greatest job I have ever had.
I have written poetry since high school, through college, and off and on over the years. Some of these have been published in college literary magazines. For me, my poems are not just expression, but their art comes from what they look like on a page, not what they sound like. I’ve never been into poetry readings or poetry slams because of this. It’s the words, the combination of the words, their placement on a page. It’s very much a visual art for me.
Photography. I got my first camera (a Kodak Instamatic) in high school and began taking pictures of things that I seemed to see from different perspectives than others did. I eventually graduated to a 35mm camera, and now I’m back to the camera in my phone. I really enjoy finding beauty in ordinary things that others probably overlook, often what is on the ground in front of me. I don’t rearrange or reposition what’s there, I just take the picture. I call these my Detritus photos.
Modern ruins are another source of fascination for me: falling-down barns and outbuildings, leaning mailboxes. The old, the unloved, the neglected. I don’t really do anything with these photos aside from posting them on Facebook or putting them into calendars.
QUILTING. My primary creative outlet, at this stage of my life, is quilting. I started making quilts about thirty years ago, kind of on a whim. While my mother was an excellent seamstress and made most of my clothes when I was a child, she was not a quilter. And I was not into sewing. I had to do some sewing in a junior high Home Ec module and I just loathed it.
So when I decided I should make a quilt back in 1997 or so, I had to make it entirely by hand because I didn’t own a sewing machine. And I wasn’t about to buy one if I wasn’t going to continue to make more quilts. I made maybe six quilt tops and actually finished three of them by hand quilting them, and by that point I was hooked … and really, really tired of the hand-sewing thing. So I bought a machine and joined a quilt guild.
I used to keep track of the quilts I made, but that fell by the wayside some time ago. I think I’ve made in the neighborhood of 500 quilts. Most of these have been given away to family and friends, and when I got into the guild, I discovered philanthropy. For the last eight years I have been one of the co-chairs of the philanthropy program of Valley of the Mist Quilters Guild in Temecula, CA. We make and donate quilts to foster kids, women and children at a local domestic violence shelter, as well as veterans.
My primary focus is to make twin-size bed quilts for the formerly homeless veterans who have been taken in by US Vets.org, a national nonprofit. US Vets talks to homeless vets and, if they’re willing, brings them in off the streets, gets them connected with the VA and medical and psychiatric attention, and houses them. Eventually they get jobs and move back into the world.
The local US Vets operation is called Veterans Village, and is located on the grounds of March Air Reserve Base in Moreno Valley, CA. The vets’ beds are nothing fancy—twin beds. We make twin size quilts for their beds. I personally make about 20 quilts each year for philanthropy. I rarely ever know who got one of my quilts, but I’ve been told that these quilts mean a lot to the guys who receive them, and that’s all the motivation I need.
Most quilt guilds do some kind of charitable work. Personally, I don’t like the word “charity,” primarily because so many quilters use it carelessly. That carelessness is usually evident by the words “just for” preceding it. As in, “This fabric isn’t great, but it’ll be okay because it’s just for charity.” That means leftovers, afterthoughts, whatever. And this approach, to me, is wrong.
People who find themselves on the receiving end of charity typically don’t want to be there. I think we can assume that the charity recipient is probably at one of the lowest points in his or her life. To give a person a quilt of poor-quality materials, or poor construction, or ugly fabric is to add insult to injury.
Between foster kids and homeless vets and people struggling in the aftermath of natural disasters, there’s really an endless need for donated quilts. In other words, unless the arthritis in my hands gets too bad … I don’t see myself stopping !
