In a previous post, I promised to explain why you should “keep your butt on the meditation cushion or your back on the yoga mat” in the early stages of writing. There is power is resisting the urge to write. I learned the value of delayed drafting at a writer’s conference decades ago. One of … More The Creative Power of NOT Writing
In my previous post, I suggested that writers need to alternate between focused-attention meditation and open-monitoring meditation. In some stages of the creative process, we need divergent thinking, which open-monitoring meditation increases. In other stages, we need convergent thinking, which focused-attention meditation increases. (More about stages of the creative process in Chapter 4 of AWB) … More What Kind of Meditation Does Your Writing Need? Depends on What Stage It’s In
In 1937, Sinclair Lewis shared his version of an often repeated and often reworded bit of writerly wisdom: And as the recipe for writing, all writing, I remember no high-flown counsel but always and only Mary Heaton Vorse’s jibe, delivered to a bunch of young and mostly incompetent hopefuls back in 1911: ‘The art of … More Do Writers Need to Keep Our Butts in the Chair?
Insomnia: the frustrating and painful condition of wanting and needing to change your state of consciousness and being unable to do so. Writer’s Block: the frustrating and painful condition of wanting and needing to change your state of consciousness and being unable to do so. In both insomnia and writer’s block, you can’t make the … More Would You Rather have Writer’s Block or Insomnia?
I found a new source of writing inspiration on Twitter’s MondayBlogs. I particularly love it when I see a post from Colleen M. Story’s Writing and Wellness blog. And I kinda hate it because as I read Colleen’s post, I keep thinking “Exactly. This is so true. I should have written this.” Then I realize … More How to Stop Giving Up Your Writing Time: Guest Post by Colleen M. Story
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!
One of my coaching clients confessed that she always felt guilty about not writing. She felt so behind on a writing project, it seemed logical that if she could write, she should write. She never really knew when it was time to write – it was always time to write. She certainly didn’t know when … More It’s Always Time to Write, Right? Wrong!
Bane of Your Resistance 