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
The Calm Before the War
Last week, I wrote about The War of Art, a book by Steven Pressfield, the author of The Legend of Bagger Vance. The book was recommended to me at just the right time in my life. I finished my MFA last year and came out of it tired, but promptly enrolled in two more year-long … Read More
5 Things I Learned About Writing from AC/DC
When I was 19, I was way into AC/DC. I wouldn’t date a guy who didn’t own Highway to Hell on vinyl or cassette. Not because I was a spoiled brat, although I suppose I was at 19. But because the album meant so much to me. If we didn’t connect on this most basic level, … Read More
Late Bloomer
I consider myself a professional writer now, but it took me a long time to get there. And it took me a long time to decide what being a “professional writer” meant or what it looked like to earn the right to call myself a writer at all. In another lifetime, I studied English Literature … Read More
Reading Journals
During the month of December, I saw a great many social media posts about the number of books people read during 2021, as well as posts about how many books people planned to read in 2022. Last week, as 2021 wound to a close, I watched a video of a woman setting up a beautiful … Read More
The Power of Persistence
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
The Power of Focus
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
The Power of a Plan
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
The Power of Goals
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
The Power of Words
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