I love a good paradox and this is one of my favorites: the best way to set your creativity free is to impose creative constraints. Poets do it all the time. The sonnet, haiku, sestina, villanelle, quatrains, even the common limerick are all examples of the structures and constraints poets use to keep their writing … More Free Your Writing With Limits
Publishing is business; writing is art. Writers must attend to both the business side and the art side of their lives, but in what ratios? Challenging as it is, creating art is where we find joy. Publishing is where we hope to find satisfaction and success, but where we’re far more likely to find disappointment. … More How Recommitting to the Art Side of Writing Eased My Resistance
I met Eileen Peterson in a Loft class more than ten years ago. Eileen has a delightfully pragmatic approach to making life work as a working mom who writes and a writer who works and parents. Writers with or without children can benefit from Eileen’s insight into how to make time for writing. She’s honest … More How I Make Time for Writing: Guest Post by Eileen Peterson
Transitions are tricky. Even when you know you’re headed into one, the ramifications and reverberations can surprise you. Tricky and tough as they are, transitions are essential – we don’t move through the creative process without them. Writers face transitions as we go: from nowhere-in-particular to the out-of-the-blue glimmer of a new idea, character or … More Are Transisitons About to Derail Your Writing?
Who would want to read what I write? Does that question fill you with curiosity and anticipation? Or with self-doubt and despair? Is this a stopper question for you or a starter? It really can go either way, although it can be difficult to imagine feeling the opposite of your original reaction. This kind of … More Writing Stoppers or Starters? Transform Your Inner Critic to Your Inner Coach
If you’re a regular reader, it’s your turn. If you ever wanted to write, needed to write and struggled to write, you’re qualified. If you found your way, even just once, around writer’s block, through distractions and past procrastination, we want to know how you did it. This Is Our Blog This isn’t a blog … More It’s Your Turn to Write About Resistance
Being creative is incomparably rewarding, so why do we all have so many ways to avoid it? My first answer to this question was my first book, Dancing in the Dragon’s Den (published back in 1999), where I explored the connections between creativity and the shadow, what Carl Jung defined as the repressed and denied … More Do You Dare Release Your Hidden Creativity?
Are you passionately in love with writing or are you and your writing an old, married couple? When you’re in love, you tingle with passion, desire, excitement. Every moment is an opportunity to discover another fascinating detail about your beloved. Even the risk of being disappointed, rejected or broken-hearted is thrilling. When you love, you’re … More How You Do Love Writing?
Most writer’s resistance can be traced to the fear that we might get hurt. Let me reassure you. You WILL get hurt. Your writing will be flawed. Some people will criticize it and you. More will ignore it. The vast majority of the 7.6 billion people on the planet will never know or care about … More Want to Write? You Gotta Trust!
Why do you do that? Waste an hour with email or social media? Or find another way to distract yourself away from writing? Why do you wait to write? Or edit the same paragraph again and again? Why is so hard (at times) to do what you love? It might be time for a reminder: … More What Conscious Writers Need to Know About Writer’s Block
Bane of Your Resistance 