Creativity coach, writing and creative process instructor, speaker, author of Around the Writer's Block: Using Brain Science to Write the Way You Want (Penguin/Tarcher 2012) and Dancing in the Dragon's Den (Red Wheel Weiser), Teaching Artist at the Loft Literary Center.
Throughout your writing life, you will find yourself shifting between at least two of these three routes: You have no idea what your next writing project will be You have so many possible projects, you don’t know which to focus on You know exactly which one or more projects are your top priorities. The route … More Are You On a Route Suited for Multiple Writing Projects?
Thanks to Theresa for her comment and questions about managing Product Time for multiple writing projects. So Many Options You can structure Product Time for multiple projects in multiple ways. For the sake of example, let’s assume a writer who commits to 15 minutes of Product Time a day, 5 days a week. (Your actual … More How to Make the Most of Multiple Writing Projects? It Depends!
Despite the militaristic metaphors found in The War of Art and similar books, blogs and articles, resistance is not our enemy and does not need to fought, blasted or defeated. Don’t get me wrong, I love Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. It was a powerful early influence. I was relieved to learn Pressfield perspective … More Real Writers Fight Resistance, Right? Wrong!
Long ago I called them “rejection letters;” more recently I called them “letters of declination” – as in “We decline the opportunity to represent your fiction;” now I call them “best of luck letters” – as in “I wish you the best of luck in your search for representation.” What you call these letters from … More New Book Update: Celebrate the “Best of Luck” Letters
How could you possibly be grateful for feeling resistance to your writing? 1. Resistance Reveals Your Passion A student in my Writer’s Resistance class confessed “I thought I must really not want to be a writer since I’m not writing.” I reassured her that her resistance was a sign that she did want to write. … More Five Reasons to Thank Your Resistance to Writing
Do you have your Thanksgiving PTO (Personal Time Off) plan in place? When I was a wanna-be writer, I promised myself I’d write on Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Eve. I saw all holidays, weekends and vacations as times when I should be able to write. Not surprisingly, I never wrote … More Real Writers Plan Days Off
To paraphrase of Bullwinkle, “Watch me pull 50,000 words out of my hat.” For those of us who don’t write a novel a month on a regular basis, that snarling lion is our lateral habenula growling at the over-optimistic Bullwinkle part of our brain, “I’m going to do what? Sounds like 50,000 ways to fail. … More Why 50,000 Is Not the Magic #NaNoWriMo Number
Even if you haven’t made any of the trust-damaging mistakes I mentioned in my previous post “How Far Should Readers Trust You?“, plenty of other writers have. Chances are, your readers have gotten jaded. Now is the time to distinguish yourself as a writer of impeccable integrity, no matter what genres and platforms you work … More How to Refresh and Reward Your Readers’ Trust
Sometimes writing is easier than you think; sometimes writing is harder than you like. In my last post, I quoted from Carl Sandburg’s poem “A Father to His Son”: Life is hard; be steel, be a rock… life is soft loam, be gentle, go easy. When life is soft, we need the wisdom to go … More When Writing Really Is Hard, Know You Can Do Hard
Bane of Your Resistance 