Archive | March, 2014

What Rewards a Writer?


Rewards are in the eye of the receiver. A reward is whatever the person getting it wants. What I find rewarding might be “mngh” for you. Rewards for writers might include: beverages: sip of special coffee or latte, tea, hot cocoa, lemonade food: a bite of a cookie, a few M&Ms, a piece of chocolate, […]

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Rewards Rewire Your Brain for Better Writing


Rewards cause your brain to release the neurotransmitters that allow you to rewire your brain. This rewiring takes more time and repetition than your conscious mind might think necessary. You might spend several weeks or months repeating and rewarding a series of tiny, incremental steps to acquire the writing habits and skills you want. If […]

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Reward Your Intermediate Writing Steps


Speaking is natural and innate for humans; writing is not. Likewise, much of what dogs do in agility are natural behaviors – running, jumping, climbing – but navigating the teeter-totter is not. Watch the first 40 seconds of this if you’ve never seen a dog on a teeter-totter. What does teaching my dog to walk a […]

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Why Rewards Work for Writers


If you’ve seen a border collie run an agility course, you’ve seen the epitome of self-rewarding behavior. Clearly, these dogs are eager to run. You might think that because these dogs are having so much fun, they never needed to be rewarded for doing agility, that agility was always its own reward. Not so! What […]

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Write, Reward, Repeat


Joel Canfield commented that he’d like more information about the Reward Yourself box on the Get Around Writer’s Block flowchart. The funny thing is that when I ask writers about rewarding themselves for their writing efforts, many react as if I’ve suggested they do something immoral or indecent. “Writing is its own reward!” they say, […]

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How to Get Around Writer’s Block


Once upon a time, I was a programmer/analyst for a Fortune 500 company. Really. I don’t know if I’m having flashbacks or what, but I’ve been thinking about the questions writers need to ask and the actions they need to take to recognize and move through resistance as a flowchart. Flowcharts excel in illustrating a […]

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Special Offer for My Followers


Be sure you tune in for the “Owner’s Guide to the Writer’s Brain: What’s Going On in Your Brain When You Want to Write, But Can’t.” I’ll telechat about writers’ brains with Ruth Folit of the International Association of Journal Writers on Thursday March 13, 2014 at 3 pm Central. You need to be a […]

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Resisting Your Writing? It’s GEMO Time!


“There’s over 14,000 related images on ShutterStock! I don’t know where to begin.” One of my coaching clients is creating a new blog and feeling overwhelmed by design choices, title choices, topic choices. I commiserated. I confessed that when I select images for the personalized postcards I create for her and my other clients each […]

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Yoga Cures Writer’s Block: Guest Post by L.Z. Marie


One of the best ways to move yourself out of writer’s block is to move yourself. Literally. Yoga is a delightful form of Self-care that offers the benefits of exercise and mediation. Today’s guest blogger, L.Z. Marie — author of the Merkabah series wherein cosmic mysteries meet ancient legends when an empathic professor and her […]

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