I loved having Katy Perry in my Loft classes. She not only gave the Three...
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Five Reasons to Thank Your Resistance to Writing
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. […]
Real Writers Plan Days Off
Next week is Thanksgiving: do you have your 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 […]
Random Scene Generator: 10 Steps to Solve the “I don’t know what to write” Problem
It’s day 10 of NaNoWriMo or November 10 for those of us not doing NaNoWriMo. So it seems like a good time to revisit this, my most popular post. Even if you aren’t doing NaNoWriMo, you can still play with the Random Scene Generator. Random Scene Generator It takes about a half-hour to create your […]
When You Don’t Know What to Write…
When you don’t have a clue what to write about, let yourself be inspired by whatever National Day is coming up. Since National Donut Day is right around the corner, let’s use donuts. No, not by eating them. All right, go ahead and eat one, then consider other ways you can use be inspired by […]
Why 50,000 Is Not the Magic #NaNoWriMo Number
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. […]
Forget Plot Outlines! Is Your Habenula NaNoWriMo Ready?
(NOTE: Not even considering NaNoWriMo? Keep reading; this stuff applies to any writer.) Of course, knowing who your characters are, what they want, what they need and what stands in their way is important, but if your habenula isn’t firing right, NaNoWriMo is going to be a month-long lesson in frustration. To be precise, I […]
How Scratching the FOMO-Itch Blocks Your Writing
FOMO is real – both the fear and the missing out part – and is particularly risky for writers. The Fear Like any fear, FOMO will activate your limbic system, which evolved to react fast to tangible, immediate danger. In the face of imminent life-or-death threats, your brain doesn’t waste time contemplating the pros and […]
Writing Your Best is Your Worst Idea
“The best is oftentimes the enemy of the good; and many a good book has remained unwritten… because there floated before the mind’s eye the ideal of a better or a best.” – R. C. Trench, 1861 In 1861, people had the luxury of contemplating ideas in elegant language like this. Today, we consume […]
Too Sick to Write? Maybe, Maybe Not
In response to the previous post, Block Your Saboteur Before It Blocks Your Writing, Glynis Jolly commented that her saboteur was showing up as annoying health problems: “Being flexible is about all I can do to fight it. Nevertheless, I do have a schedule in place for my writing. Some days are good and […]
Block Your Saboteur Before It Blocks Your Writing
The Saboteur has many faces: Attacker, Enticer, Innocent, Protector and Unlucky. Different routes to the same goal — to block our writing. Just when we think we’ve figured out how to identify the Saboteur and avoid the roadblocks it sets up, it morphs into a different form and uses different techniques to invade our thinking. […]
