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Take 5 Friday: Five Scary Writing Monsters To Banish
Even the most confident authors find themselves plagued by writing monsters and since it is so close to Halloween, I thought it was a good time to identify and then banish some of those creeps. Here are some of the most common monsters that try to scare us away from writing. It can be tricky to banish them but being aware of their monsterish nature is the first step to getting rid of them – or at least keeping them quiet for a while. When you learn to recognize them quickly, you will be able to silence them quickly, too. Redy to identify some writing monsters? Let’s go! Monster #1:…
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10 Things You Should Say That Will Make You More Successful
Good thoughts produce good habits. Good habits produce good patterns. Good patterns help us grow in discipline, which makes us more confident, which allows us to succeed.
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Nine Ways I Took An Artist’s Rest
If you too have worn yourself out with your writing goals, remember sometimes the best something you can do for yourself is nothing.
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Five More Things You Could Be Saying To Yourself That Will Guarantee Failure
I spent decades of my life saying negative things to myself. As a result, I was unhappy and unsuccessful in nearly everything I did. It wasn’t until I recognized what I was doing, started seeing a therapist, and made the conscious effort to speak to myself with kindness, that things changed for me.
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Nine Things You Could Say To Yourself That Could Change Everything
I can see that in this very subjective, heartbreaking world of writing and publishing, the attraction of negativity is often too strong to fight against. We writers are often sensitive souls and perhaps we all drink, smoke, wear black and talk to cats because we don’t know how to say positive things to ourselves.
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Take 5 Friday: Five Ways to Speak More Kindly to Your Writer Self
As writers, we spend a lot of time in our own heads, trying to coax words onto the page. Then, once the words get there, we spend a lot of time trying to reshape them to clarify our ideas. It’s a process filled with self-esteem peril. We end up criticizing ourselves for not working hard enough, not working often enough, not working in the right way, or not working on the right thing. Or, we get frustrated with the words we did produce, wondering why we can’t match the ideal we had in our heads. There’s an awful lot of focus on what we did ‘wrong,’ or on what is…
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When Darkness Keeps You From Writing
My own core negative beliefs included: "My dreams aren't worth the trouble." "I'll probably never succeed, so why try?" "I'm not good enough." "I've failed before, so I'll probably fail again," and "shouldn't wifehood and motherhood be enough?"
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Take 5 Friday: Five Questions To Ask Yourself
Most of us have a good general idea of our plans and motivations. But we also have so many different things going on in our lives that it’s easy to forget to check in with ourselves about how things are going. Once we have created a system or a plan, we tend to keep trying to follow it until things go horribly wrong. However, even if things haven’t gone horribly wrong, the plan or system might still not be completely right. It might be causing us unnecessary frustration or stress just because it no longer matches our needs. If we take time to check in with ourselves and assess what…
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How To Make Small Goals Work For You
As much as you'd like to think you can shoot for the moon, I think that the moon, as beautiful and romantic as it is, isn't even a little bit possible. At least for right now. It could be that in the season your life is in, to be a writer, we need to start small, we need to have low expectations.
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Conquering Fear In 10 Minutes
You are joining a generational chorus of the anxious. Some of us have navigated this well and figured out ways to overcome it. Some of us attempt to drown it in alcohol. Too many of us have slipped into self-destructive darkness to silence it.
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What Happened When I Stopped Complaining
I challenged myself to watch what I said and to stop complaining. I thought that by stopping the bad attitude was just a generally a good step in the direction of restraint. I had no idea that this would change nearly everything about my life.
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Dos & Don’ts for Writers Having An Existential Crisis
I have a feeling, however, that I am not the only one who feels like this. So, I’ve come up with a quick list of No-Nos for us who are doubting our writerly futures during difficult times.
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10 Things I Can Do To Build Up My Confidence
I'm in a place where my expectations of what could have been are paralyzing my current choices. But if I'm going to go any further in what I do as a writer, I need to get over myself and grow in confidence.
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Ten Ways To Be A Happy Writer
You’ve come home from a tiring day job. You try to sit down at your laptop and write a few words before relaxing for the evening. But the words won’t flow. Or maybe you’re one of those lucky people who get to write full-time for a living. You sit in your home office day after day pounding out the words. Are you a happy writer? Is it possible to be one?