Judith Cassis, C.Ht.

During the 50s to mid 60s, the Beatnik culture emerged as a rhythmic representation of art, music and poetry. It was a media stereotype that displayed aspects of the Beat generation – written about by various authors of the day. Beatniks were characterized by dark glasses and clothing, berets and bongo drums. Cigarette’s were anything but in short supply in the smokey coffee houses and afternoon gathering spots. This Saturday,  [ Read More ]

There’s a common phrase: The shoemaker’s kids have no shoes. It refers to the fact that those closest to us are usually last on the list. Today I’m including a writer’s baby: the blog. Just as the shoemaker is busy making shoes to sell and tends to put off covering his own children’s feet, sometimes a writer gets so busy writing for others, she neglects posting to her own blog.  [ Read More ]

Most of what I blog about revolves around writing. Hints, reviews, and guidelines as well as a little marketing advice usually find their way to the top of my mind and tips of my fingers. Today I’d like to take a few minutes to broach a subject about something that sits on the southern part of your face–your smile! As a writer you’ll have opportunities to meet people who can  [ Read More ]

So, I’ll get to the point. I cancelled my email account with Earthlink and ultimately lost my password and THEN ended up losing touch with and needing to recreate my LinkedIn profile. What a pain! Every now and then someone requests a connection from that old profile. Why? BECAUSE I CANT CANCEL IT!I can’t find it either.I get frustrated sometimes until I remind myself that: 1) Social Media is not  [ Read More ]

At the risk of shocking a few of my social media marketing buddies, I gotta say I’m not really in to twitter. Even though I’ve used it successfully from time to time it feels really high-maintenance. Whew – that feels really great to admit. Freeing, actually. I hear constantly from coaches and social media gurus how important twitter is. And like I said, I’ve had relative success using the tool.  [ Read More ]

February, 2007; my friend Sidney rocked my world. Sorry for the cliche – no other way to express it. He introduced me to Facebook. Oh, not the Facebook of today. It was a very different animal in those days. Try: easy to navigate, simple to learn…. I was all about connecting. Within the first month I had connected with hundreds of people from around the world. I met other writers,  [ Read More ]

I began writing at the age of seven or eight; mostly poetry until I sat down at age eleven to write my first story.  As I recall, I was fourteen when I began writing for my first targeted albeit private audience – me.  I still have my first diary. My first crush, the death of my father and adolescent squabbles with my girlfriends are immortalized on those pages. Then their  [ Read More ]

When the subject of plays comes to mind, many people think of long, drawn-out comedies or dramas that consume a good deal of the audience’s time. The most famous playwright, Shakespeare, wrote really several really long plays.  But not all performances need to captivate hours of our time. One Act plays are short performances anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour. They’re complete in and of themselves. If you’ve never  [ Read More ]

Have you ever written – or thought of writing – a play? If the idea seems daunting, rest easy. How about starting with a One Act Play, or Flash Drama? It’s ten minutes long; start to finish. No, you don’t keep people hanging in wait for the sequel. A One Act Play tells the story from start to finish in 10 minutes. It can be a monologue or include several  [ Read More ]

One of the most attractive things to me as a writer is having the freedom to create my own worlds according to my rules and laws. Storytellers, playwrights and script writers all know this feeling.What writers create sometimes lives only in our imaginations and it’s exciting to make them real, if only on paper. But being a creator comes with responsibility. Even though we make our own rules, we can’t  [ Read More ]