Kudos to me! I reached my target to create a scene card for every scene in the novel I’m revising. The pile of index cards is over an inch high. I wanted to complete this stage in August because it’s an exercise I’ll ask students to do in my new online Revisiting the Flow class. … More New Book Update: An Unexpected Breakthrough
You might remember from a previous New Book Update, that my plan for revising my novel was to: dreamstorm possible new scenes and modifications to existing scenes then play around with new, modified and existing scenes on index cards or Post-it Notes to find a new structure (at the macro level of scenes) BEFORE I … More New Book Update: Best Laid Plans Oft Go Astray (But Don’t Let That Block Your Writing)
When I started revising my novel, The Essential Path, back on January 3, I started keeping a new journal just for the novel. It didn’t include as much detail as my Product Time Tracking Table, but the short, simple journal entries worked for me. Around the Ides of March, I realized I hadn’t written in … More New Book Update: Easy Doesn’t Always Do It
When I switch from one stage to another in the writing process, I sputter like an old engine that’s not firing all cylinders. At the start of the year, I struggled to start reading my (previously abandoned) novel. But once I coaxed my mind to shift gears, I found my reading rhythm and chugged along. … More New Book Update: Sputtering On
Last September, I promised myself I would return to my Essential Path novel in January. My plan was to follow the advice I gave a client: read the entire novel without judgment, without making notes, noticing only what I love about the novel. I wouldn’t start thinking about what was working and what needed tweaking … More New Book Update: Loving Eyes Are Not Blind
In my last New Book Update, I admitted that I had too many “top priority” projects. So I made the difficult decision to postpone work on my new novel. Since then, I recognized how perfectionism had pushed me away from the novel I finished drafting years ago. And I scheduled a mini-retreat in January to … More New Book Update: Making Progress By Postponing
Sometimes postponing is a form of resistance, but in this case, postponing is the first step in resolving resistance. I don’t want to, but I really need to move a few projects from my Current Projects list to my Someday list. So with regret, I’m postponing my new fiction project. I still play with the … More New Book Update: Why I Need to Postpone My Novel
In the previous New Book Update, I talked about how, when I’m writing nonfiction, I strive to get as much out of each stage in the creative process before moving on to the next stage. But when I’m writing fiction, I spiral through some or most of the stages, then drop back and spiral through … More New Book Update: Fiction Spirals
“Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. “Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.” – Norman Vincent Peale In my last New … More New Book Update: Action Cures Uncertainty
I’m embracing uncertainty. Admittedly, I’m embracing it with the one-handed, two-second pat-his-back-and-push-back kind of hug you give an uncle you never really liked far more than with the open-hearted, lingering enfolding you give your Beloved. But it’s a start. I’m in First Insight (described in chapter 4 of Around the Writer’s Block). This is the … More New Book Update: My Early Attempts to Embrace Uncertainty
Bane of Your Resistance 