The Fire Inside A Companion for the Creative Life

Within each one of us, there is a deep need for creative expression—whether it be in the visual arts, writing, or the sort of “everyday” creativity which can so enrich our lives.

Our creativity quotients are greater than we can imagine; we just need to tap into that potential. Based on the authors’ combined fifty-five years of teaching and presenting workshops on writing and creativity, The Fire Inside is packed with creative tips and exercises, anecdotes, insights, inspiration, and hearty acknowledgements to the reader, that you, too, can heighten your creativity. Living the life of an artist is joy-filled but challenging. Wherever you are in that life, it helps to have strategies to keep going, and it helps to have a companion along the journey. The Fire Inside, written in a spirit of warmth and generosity, can be that companion. It may be read straight through, or to enjoy a daily dose of inspiration, read one well-researched, heart-opening story at a time. Whichever way one chooses, The Fire Inside invites readers to say yes to creativity, choose to live a bigger life, and discover how the “magic” happens.

These writers have great authority and expertise on this topic. They write ideas that are fresh and new with profound potential for empowering readers as well as writers, connecting them with their honest, authentic peers." - Mary Pipher, author of The Green Boat: Reviving Ourselves in Our Capsized Culture and Writing to Change the World.

Lucy Adkins earned her MFA from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and is a writer of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in many journals and anthologies, and her first poetry chapbook, One Life Shining, was published by Pudding House Press. She co-presents the Nebraska Humanities program "Diaries and Letters of Early Nebraska Settlers," and is a frequent writing instructor for OLLI, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and the Larksong Writers' Workshops. Becky Breed, a veteran educator, poet, and essayist, co-wrote and facilitated "Women at the Springs," a Nebraska Humanities program empowering women to act and live more courageously, as well as "The Intergenerational Project" connecting elders and teens through stories to promote communication, writing, and use of the media. She has an Ed.D. in Education, and in addition to teaching at the university level, has been a principal at an alternative high school.