How would you feel if you were playing hide-and-seek and no one came to find you? What if it turned out you were “It” and everyone else was waiting for you to find them? Are you playing a backwards game of hide-and-seek with your writing? Are you hiding, waiting for inspiration to find you when […]

Let Your Writing Scare You
I have a miserable cold. Actually, the cold virus is probably quite content; I’m miserable. Creative cognition seems beyond me, so I invite you to appreciate this video. George Saunders will assure you that “It’s scary to not know where a story is going.” How is that reassuring? Because writing should be scary. Settle in […]

Top 10 Routes thru Writer’s Resistance: Guest Post by C. L. Blacke
When I read C. L. Blacke’s blog about cultivating a writing practice, I knew you’d want to learn more about her routes around, over and through resistance. C.L. reports that, in the early years, trying to overcome writing resistance “felt like smashing my head against a wall and expecting it to move.” When she finally […]

Writers’ Brains Require Random Input
“Where did that come from?” Usually I’m so enthralled by fresh ideas, images, insights and plot points, I immediately focus on weaving them into the story. I’m so busy figuring out where to go with those ideas and images, I don’t notice where they came from. For example, I couldn’t tell you why the leaves […]

What Writers Need Even More than Creative Leaps
We all seek the next big “A-ha” moment. We yearn for grand and glorious creative leaps. Those flashes of inspiration reassure us that we’re on the right path. And they feel so good. A flash of creative insight might look like a huge, spontaneous leap of intuition, but that big, gratifying “A-ha!” is always preceded […]