My last post explained why writing prompts work and provided links for finding them. You can also create your own creative constraints via the Random Scene Generator, a tool I introduced several years ago in what has become my most viewed post. I created the Random Scene Generator (RSG) as a birthday present for a … More Random Writing Prompts to Solve Writer’s Block
Too much freedom is paralyzing. The invitation to “write anything you want” is too open-ended. We can’t start because we don’t where to start. On the other hand, being told exactly what to write and how creates the “don’t tell me what to do” opposition response. Writing prompts work because they hit that sweet spot … More Why Writing Prompts Work
Claudia and I are nearly at the end of “Weddingarama.” We fly out tomorrow morning to celebrate a milestone birthday for my mom and to attend the last of six weddings in eight weeks (these last three weddings in three weeks). It is an honor it is to witness the most important day of our … More Today I Make Time to Write!
Does your writing have to settle for the dregs of your time and attention? It is always shoved into last place in the queue? If you frequently delay your writing because you’re bouncing from one urgency to another, your writing is the victim of the Urgency Bully. You can fight back! You can give your … More Is Your Writing Important Enough to Fight the Urgency Bully?
The metaphor of constipation for writer’s block has been around for a long time… Back in 1992, Clarissa Pinkola Estés talked about creative constipation in her audio recording The Creative Fire (Sounds True). She defined creativity as psychic excrement that we all naturally produce and need to express daily. Otherwise psychic toxins build up, and voilà, … More How to Cure Creative Constipation, aka Writer’s Block
It may be that what you think of as writer’s block or resistance is simply the result of forsaking writing by hand. To support that conclusion, I wanted to quote at least half of a NYT article about how losing handwriting affects learning and brain function. I decided instead to simply send you there to … More Pick Up Your Pen and Put Down Writer’s Block
In a comment on a previous post, Judy Westergard wrote that her readers are the darlings she needs to kill to give herself freedom to write what needs to be written. Most writers, when they talk about killing their darlings, are referring to particular lines or passages that they just love, but that don’t really … More Neither Twisted Writer or Blocked Writer – Dreaming Writer
My previous post raised questions about hurting fictional characters: Do you question yourself about your willingness to write the scenes where people are going to get hurt? Do you stop short of where the story needs to go because you’re afraid of what others will think of you? How do you know when you’ve gone … More Twisted Writer or Blocked Writer: How Much Is Enough?
About a month ago, Sara, a coaching client, and I talked about how she could set target dates as she drafted her novel. She decided to set a target for so many words per week and target dates for reaching specified total number of words. We talked about the potential emotional hazards this posed for … More New Book Update: Are Targets Dangerous for Writers?
Writer’s block consists of exerting an excruciating amount of energy to accomplish nothing. I suggest you skip the painful part, and do nothing right from the start. Writers need plenty of time to do nothing and do it well. Brenda Ueland intuited the value of time to do nothing back in 1938 when she wrote … More Nothing Beats Writer’s Block Like Doing Nothing
Bane of Your Resistance 