Book Coaching & Editing Services for Writers of Fiction & Creative Nonfiction
I’ve been reading about writing, editing, and creativity lately, and a theme that keeps popping up is the amount of time and hard work it takes to acquire natural born writing talent. We’ve all read stories of “overnight success”–talented actors, writers, musicians, who seemingly burst onto the scene out of nowhere. What we don’t hear … Read More
I want to talk to you today about a Flavorwire article I read eight years ago. It’s an old article, yes, but (1) it’s still relevant today, and (2) it made such an impact on me that I’m still thinking about it eight years later. I also want to point out that, while the 2014 article … Read More
Over the past month, I’ve been setting out the steps for turning your writing dreams into attainable goals: 1. Set your dreams down in writing (The Power of Words); 2. Create specific goals (The Power of Goals); 3. Create a plan to reach your goals (The Power of a Plan); 4. Focus on one goal … Read More
I’m a big fan of dreaming without limits. But something I’ve learned the hard way is that, if you ever want to reach your dream life, it’s important to focus your efforts. Focus, visualization, and determination are powerful tools that will help you to reach even the most seemingly impossible goals. Rather than spreading yourself … 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
This is a case history. I’m sharing my long, arduous, and disjointed writing journey with you in the hopes you can skip to the good part. I started writing short stories in elementary school. In my teens, I shifted to writing very bad, very schmaltzy, very angsty poetry. In my twenties: As an undergraduate at … Read More
I gave up making New Year’s Resolutions a long time ago, but every December since the year 2000, I’ve made a list of goals for the coming year. I used to type them, but beginning in 2009, I started writing the lists down by hand in my “dream journal,” a separate journal that houses my … Read More
As we head into the winter holidays, I’ve gathered a collection of 31 quotes and passages about gratitude from well-known writers. I hope you enjoy them, and I wish you and your loved ones health and happiness. “Let all your thinks be thanks.” —W.H. Auden “In the end, though, maybe we must all give up … 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
I used to think of structure as the enemy. I believed that, if I tried to impose any kind of structure on my writing life, it would interfere with my creativity. Writers are artists, right? Artists don’t live a boring, rigorously scheduled, 9-5 life. Artists wake up when they please, go out for coffee in … Read More