Tag: Self-Publishing

  • Listening to Your Ghosts

    Listening to Your Ghosts

    by Jen Payne, author, Sleeping with Ghosts For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him… — Plato Ghosts, Muses, Inspiration, Universe, God. Call it what you…

  • The Importance of Retreat

    The Importance of Retreat

    If the world were a sound, it would be flipping through all of the channels on a radio really fast. Announcers and DJs, commercials and music genres overlapping in the same way our 21st-century tasks seem to layer upon themselves. We’re always busy, there’s always something else to be managed, and the To Do list…

  • About the Ghosts in Sleeping with Ghosts

    About the Ghosts in Sleeping with Ghosts

    by Jen Payne, author, Sleeping with Ghosts I am a part of all that I have met;Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fadesFor ever and forever when I move.How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!As tho’ to breathe were…

  • How One Phone Call in 1996 Led to a Life of Self-Publishing

    How One Phone Call in 1996 Led to a Life of Self-Publishing

    by Jen Payne, author, Sleeping with Ghosts I started my business, Words by Jen, in 1993. It was a part-time effort at first, offering writing and “desktop publishing” services to a small-but-growing list of local businesses, artists, and non-profits. By 1996, I had moved my office from the second bedroom of an apartment to commercial…

  • The Artwork of Sleeping with Ghosts

    The Artwork of Sleeping with Ghosts

    by Jen Payne, author, Sleeping with Ghosts People often comment about the visual nature of my creative work, and how my writing is usually accompanied by photography or artwork. As a graphic designer, artist, and writer, I firmly believe that partnering visuals and words layers the intentions of my work and makes the communication more…

  • The Importance of Storytelling

    The Importance of Storytelling

    by Jen Payne, author, Sleeping with Ghosts My mother, who is easily insulted, often remembers the time a therapist called her a storyteller. Mom recounts the comment as one might an injustice, and she twists and elongates the word “storyteller” to make it sound as painful as it felt for her. What’s the old saying?…

  • Time to Write

    Time to Write

    by Jen Payne, author, Sleeping with Ghosts Did you know that Picasso created more than 50,000 works of art, but only about 100 of those are considered masterpieces? That’s less than 1% of his work! I think about that little fact every April, when I attempt to write a poem a month for NaPoWriMo (National…

  • Creatively Speaking: Summer Reading

    Creatively Speaking: Summer Reading

    I remember with much fondness my local library’s summer reading programs. There was a large bulletin board with a hand-drawn map or roadway, and construction paper vehicles that we could move forward depending on how many books we had read. Even now, I have a deep sweet memory of the summers when I was 11,…

  • INTERVIEW: Jen Payne and Kaecey McCormick, Some Thoughts: Everything Creativity

    INTERVIEW: Jen Payne and Kaecey McCormick, Some Thoughts: Everything Creativity

    Today, I talk with Kaecey McCormick at Some Thoughts: Everything Creativity, who writes: “I’m thrilled to bring author Jen Payne to the blog today in an interview to discuss life, writing, and her new book, Sleeping with Ghosts. Earlier this month, I hosted a Community Poetry & Prose Night with the theme “The Ghosts We Carry,”…

  • How One Phone Call in 1996 Led to a Life of Self-Publishing

    How One Phone Call in 1996 Led to a Life of Self-Publishing

    by Jen Payne, author, Sleeping with Ghosts I started my business, Words by Jen, in 1993. It was a part-time effort at first, offering writing and “desktop publishing” services to a small-but-growing list of local businesses, artists, and non-profits. By 1996, I had moved my office from the second bedroom of an apartment to commercial…

  • The Importance of Retreat

    The Importance of Retreat

    If the world were a sound, it would be flipping through all of the channels on a radio really fast. Announcers and DJs, commercials and music genres overlapping in the same way our 21st-century tasks seem to layer upon themselves. We’re always busy, there’s always something else to be managed, and the To Do list…

  • Listening to Your Ghosts

    Listening to Your Ghosts

    by Jen Payne, author, Sleeping with Ghosts For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him… — Plato Ghosts, Muses, Inspiration, Universe, God. Call it what you…