We live in a culture of sound bites, text messages, Tweets and bullet points. A Facebook status update or an email that’s longer three sentences raises our eyebrows and creates judgments about how long-winded the author is. There are times when brevity is the soul of wit, but there also times when brevity reveals the … More Focus, People, Focus!
Self-care is recognizing what you need most and giving yourself that. In an appreciative inquiry, I asked the students in my Entering the Flow class to write about the good things they did for themselves as a writer in the past week. Because one of the key principles in appreciative inquiry (AI) is that we … More You Know What to Do (to Care for Your Writer Self and Eliminate Writer’s Block)
I just ate breakfast. Before you assume this is a self-absorbed, Tweet-style post, let me clarify: I only ate breakfast. I didn’t eat while reading my email or watching TV. I didn’t mindlessly swallow a bowlful of unnoticed food while reading the paper, a novel, magazine or Facebook. I didn’t get dressed between bites or … More Mindful Eating = Mindful Writing
Meditation – the third component of self-care – offers a host of benefits including reducing stress and reversing the ill effects of stress, improving mood, increasing creativity and reducing resistance. But one of the most significant benefits of meditation for writers is that it enhances empathy. Writers are in the empathy business. When we write prose, … More What Writers Get Out of Meditation
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 The Insomnia Cure for Writer’s Block
Whether you’ve just signed yourself up to write a novel in a month or you’re facing other writing challenges as we move into the winter holidays, you may be tempted to skimp on sleep so you can keep up with a schedule that always seems to get frenzied this time of year. Don’t! The sleep-deprived … More NaNo or Not, You Need Your Sleep!
Fifteen minutes of productive writing time that is. Turns out our creativity is intimately intertwined with our physical health and well-being. How wrong we were when we believed in the separation of body and brain. When I was a kid, the prevailing view was that not only were intelligence and physical prowess separate, they were … More Drop and Give Me 15!
In response to the latest poll, Michael K. requested posts on tracking and self-care, adding “It’s slightly possible that I’m having the most trouble with these myself.” Why Resist Self-Care? Michael is not alone. Questions about self-care came up during the Live Chat of my online Entering the Flow class this week and it’s a … More Ready to Write?
Thanks to everyone who voted for a section title to replace “Brain Factoids” in the upcoming Around the Writer’s Block: Using Brain Science to Solve Writer’s Resistance. The majority of you voted for “Inside the Writer’s Brain,” which is what I was leaning toward myself. So Inside the Writer’s Brain we go! What you’ll find … More The Results Are In: Inside the Writer’s Brain We Go!
Some writers don’t realize that they’ve got writer’s resistance. They think they’re lazy or undisciplined, untalented or don’t really want to write. All of this is Saboteur-speak, the self-destructive lies we tell ourselves when we’re in the clutches of the Saboteur. It’s important to recognize resistance for what it is: natural, normal and most importantly, … More Still Lazy After All These Years?
Bane of Your Resistance 