On any given day, you can’t tell whether you’ll string words into powerful prose/evocative poetry or if you’ll just move crap around on the screen/page, making a mess that doesn’t add up to anything. It doesn’t matter. To write well, first you have to write. To write at all, you have to be willing to … More Why It Doesn’t Matter If Your Writing Is Any Good
I’m shooting for a brief post today because quite frankly, I’m loving what I’m doing with my novel right now and I’m eager to get back to it. In the past two and a half months, I’ve deleted nearly 5,000 words from my novel, Essential Path, significantly improving the story AND making my writing process … More New Book Update: Going Deep Tightens My Fiction and Relaxes My Process
What kind of writer are you: A tortoise — slow but steady? A hare — lazy but fast when you get around to it? Or a porcupine — excellent but unheard of? Porcupine was in the famous race between the Tortoise and the Hare, but no one ever hears about it. Porcupine knew he wasn’t … More Writers Should Maximize Their Potential, Right? Wrong!
I get it. You have to make money and you either do that through writing, in which case you don’t have time to fart around, or you make money through another skill and write in your “spare time,” in which case you don’t have time to fart around. You want time to spend with people … More Writers Can’t Afford to Waste Time, Right? Wrong!
When E. L. Doctorow observed that planning to write, outlining, researching or talking about you’re going to write is NOT writing, I think he meant we can’t just hope to write or dream about writing, we have to take action. Unfortunately, many of my students and clients have interpreted that mindset (wherever they know the … More Only Writing Is Writing, Right? Wrong!
Bane of Your Resistance 