Book Coaching & Editing Services for Writers of Fiction & Creative Nonfiction
National Novel Writing Month is starting in just a few days. I’m wondering, are you in this year? Or are you out? I used to dive into NaNoWriMo haphazardly—it was a given I’d participate. Now I consider more carefully whether NaNoWriMo will serve me. This year, to make my decision, I thought about things like … Read More
Today’s message is a simple one: start writing your story. Worrying too long and too hard about how to start a story can make a writer freeze up. Stop worrying. Stop overthinking. Start writing. There’s a difference between a work’s beginning and starting to work. –Twyla Tharp I mean, it matters immensely how you start. … Read More
Last week, I wrote about setting goals for your writing and mentioned a famous quote from Yogi Berra: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.” A man, a plan, a canal—Panama. This is much more than my daughter’s favorite palindrome. It’s a blueprint for success. When Theodore Roosevelt dreamed of … Read More
A half dozen Christmases ago, my daughter Melissa gave me a book called 642 Things to Write About. At the time, I had never used writing prompts, except once during a dark November when I was seriously stuck and in danger of falling far short of my NaNoWriMo word count. The prompt I used then … Read More
Before I started writing regularly, I used to be afraid I would run out of words. It’s weird, I know, but that fear is one of the things that kept me from writing for many years. I wasn’t confident I had enough ideas, enough interesting things to say, let alone many interesting things to say. … Read More