Paula Danes Creative

January 3, 2026

Hello, Fellow Imaginers! What happens when a mass of hot air drops into an area where there’s a mass of cold air? Rain? Snow? Tornadoes? Maybe nothing but shivers one minute and sweating the next?

That’s only one of a thousand thousand prompts I’ve used to write and develop some of the materials you find on this site. Welcome to my page! I’m Paula Danes, a writer, photographer, and artist who’s given herself permission to play and share her rambles and images with others as she explores the what happens questions of life. I hope you enjoy the ideas and, if you’re a writer or artist yourself, the prompts. Each have their own pages.

Please feel free to wander through the site, to subscribe, and to visit often. I have pages that share stories, true and fictional, as well as serialized books as they unfold. I also have pages that share art and photography, each with a background to help them be a bit more meaningful.

Who am I? You can visit my About page, but I’ll tell you here in a nutshell. I’m am Jane Doe, any woman, every woman. That’s a line from a piece I’ll be posting on this site. I am an average woman. I have talents and skills, and I have hopes and dreams. I’m no longer in the prime of life, but I have a rich life to share. Here I hope to share the best and worst of me, of my imagination, and of my life as, like a computer, I download what I’ve seen, heard, learned, and imagined through stories, images, and memoirs for others to enjoy. I share with you my most precious gift–myself…in pages filled with laughter, gritted teeth, and hopes. I hope you enjoy and visit often.

January 7, 2026

Today, I’m rushing to finally get my home office–my teaching, writing, and art space–organized. I feel sick to my stomach if I don’t get to do some writing every day, but I have trouble sometimes blocking out the need to clean, or organize, or just breathe deeply when my space is awkward. Where is everything? It makes me crazy.

They talk about writers entering the zone when they’re so caught up in their writing that the world just fades around them. I don’t know about you fellow writers, but I love entering the zone. I want to be there! I want Samantha’s nose or Mary Poppins’s magic bag. I want everything in its place without me having to figure out where that place is so I can write!

Here’s to the reorganization being done soon, so I can enter my private space, my mind palace as Sherlock Holmes would call it or my memory warehouse as Jonesy in the film Dreamcatcher would call it, and block out the world for an hour or two as I write!

Today’s prompt: What does it take you to write in the zone? Where do you need to be? What’s special about that time for you? And is there a story there about a time when something stopped you from entering it or pulled you from it?