Letting Go After my last New Book Update post about receiving “Best of...
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How Trustworthy Are You?
To write what you truly want to write, you must take creative risks. You have to keep moving forward when you’re uncertain. You have to expose your creative self. You have to claim your own voice and simultaneously stay open to learning new tools and techniques. You have to embrace your crazy, clichéd ideas (all […]
Out of the Postponement Loop: Step 2 Writing from the Bubbles of an Idea
When I posted the previous post in the Out of the Postponement Loop series, I didn’t know if my next step in rescuing my “Early Drafts” project would be to look at the Shitty First Drafts cluster for structure and transitions among the bubble topics or to freewrite. Turns out, I didn’t take either of those […]
Why You Must Never Skip a Writing Reward
What happens when you promise yourself a writing reward, do the writing and skip the reward? Because you’re at least as smart as a dog, you stop trying. This video demonstrates what happens when dogs know they’re being cheated out a reward they earned. You might think that not giving yourself a promised reward is […]
Writing Should Be Its Own Reward, Right? Wrong!
When we’re in the flow and the words flow effortlessly, writing is its own reward. We don’t need to reward ourselves then; in fact, giving a reward for something that is intrinsically rewarding can be counterproductive. But writing isn’t intrinsically rewarding all, or even most, of the time. The misbelief that it should be creates […]
Rescuing My “Early Drafts” Project from a Postponement Loop: Step 1 Pull a Rabbit Out of My Hat
In a previous post, I promised to reveal my writing process as I move my idea about “Early Drafts vs. Shitty First Drafts” out of a Postponement Loop into a finished piece. Here’s my messy first step in pulling this rabbit out of my hat. In the past few weeks, I spent several nights exploring […]
Seven Things I Learned Through Process Play: Guest Post by Catherine Brennan
I met Catherine Brennan in one of my Loft classes. Her first reaction to Process (play for the sake of play) was a mix of anxiety and enthusiasm. As she played around with the idea of playing around to support her writing, she found creative play expanded her writing and her life as a writer […]
How to Rescue Your Lost Writing From Postponement Loops
For several years, I’ve had what I think is an excellent theory about why we shouldn’t call our early drafts shitty and what we should call them instead. Every time one of my students mentioned Anne Lamont’s “shitty first drafts,” I’d explain my theory and remember I want to write a blog post about it. […]
Your Best Writing Lies Beyond Certainty
Creativity is born in uncertainty. It’s a grand Easter egg hunt – the more you search, the more possibilities you explore, the better your chances of finding the best solution. Your challenge is that even if you may be consciously willing to keep looking, your brain isn’t. Too Efficient For Our Own Good Sometimes Because […]
Embrace Uncertainty and Reject Writing Resistance
If you ever put off writing because you didn’t know how to start, you know how intimidating the unknown is. We think we’re supposed to know what we’re going to write before we write it. It’s not the uncertainty that stops us; it’s our fear of uncertainty. There’s this myth that knowledge is power. That […]
Refine Your Writing Rewards
by rosannebane on August 30, 2018 in Overcoming Resistance, Recognition and Rewards
Reader comments on my previous post, Writing Should Be It’s Own Reward, Right? Wrong!, highlighted where I need to clarify a few things for everyone’s benefit. (This is one of the reasons I love your feedback; another is that your comments tell me my writing mattered to you, which tremendously rewarding for me.) Joel Canfield […]