Rachel Barlow is a gifted writer, illustrator, cartoonist, and now, magnet maker. She has been a student of mine on and off for four years, and I have told her a thousand times that she is a true creative, and can make it in the world as one. She has battled a number of demons to get there, but even she – notoriously unassuming about herself – is excited. She is selling her illustrated magnets like crazy at her new online retail therapy store.

Rachel does just about everything well – she is a skilled writer and illustrator, she has a wicked but gentle sense of humor.

Rachel’s enemy has always been low self-esteem, never talent. She has this idea that creative success can only come out of workshops and graduate programs, she and I have been quarreling about this for as long as we have known one another. Rachel doesn’t need anything but the will, and she is getting some real success now, and that breeds a lot of good will.

Rachel produces great work – witty and timely columns, drawings, sketches, she sells stories and drawings on her quite wonderful blog, “Picking My Battles, Toons and Tales From The Domestic Front.”

I like to describe Rachel as the sustainable Erma Bombeck, the great family columnist with a bit of a contemporary bite.

Maria invited her to the June Open House at the farm, and her magnets and drawings took off, one of the hot sellers there, even she is excited. Rachel eventually wants to make a living with her art and drawings and writing, and I believe very strongly that it is possible for her, she is beginning to sense the same thing. She has done it the right way, producing and producing, building up her blog and online portfolio, experimenting with different – and always inexpensive – ways to sell her work. Her magnets sell for $5.00, they are a great gift for almost everyone (what a great stocking stuffer for Christmas.). Rachel has been invited to return to show and sell her art at the October Open House.

She is taking my short story class at Pompanuck Farm in August. She deserves every bit of her success, and much more to come. Check out her stuff. You will not find many things to put on your lamp or refrigerator than these magnets, and her cartoons and drawings are just as wonderful.

Rachel is a living testament to the idea that we all have the creative spark in us, we just have to believe it and let it free.