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Take 5: 5 Ways Writing Can Help You Calm Down
by Christine Hennebury I know, I know. This is hard. Everything is uncertain and you are probably having trouble concentrating. The way the news is changing from day to day is unsettling, it’s scary, and there is a lot that you could worry about. However, if you aren’t too sick to write, I think it would be a good idea to try to get back to your writing. Even if you can’t manage a full ten minutes, a few minutes here and there will help you feel more like yourself. It will help you feel a little calmer, and a little more in control. It might seem a little weird…
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Does Luck Have Anything To Do With Writing Success?
How much does luck really play in our writing careers? I can say that I have had my share of luck. But in the same breath, I can say that I've worked my butt off and that all the good that happened to me came because of my own work. And I'm one of those creatures who believes that my Maker could have something to do with it too.
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Five Self-Lies That 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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Top 10 Reasons To “See” Yourself As A 10 Minute Novelist
I know that when I started calling myself “the 10-minute novelist” everything changed for me. Because I saw myself doing the little bit that I could on a consistent basis, I knew that I could handle the demands of both my life and my dream. The more tightly I clung to that identity, the easier it was to set the timer and work as I could. It didn’t take long before I had created productive habits in my life, actually finished projects and had this cool brand that served me well.
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The Single Best Writing Advice (Too Bad I Don’t Always Follow It)
When I compare myself to other writers, it doesn’t do me a bit of good. I either pick up some frothy bonnet romance and throw it across the room, puffing myself up with thoughts of superiority.
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Journaling: How The Daily Practice of Writing Makes a Difference
My daily habit of writing became a practice that made me more sensitive to my circumstances and surroundings. I think that I am more empathetic and develop better characters because I wrote so much when I was younger.
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10 Ways To Beat Procrastination
The last Happy New Year balloon has been popped. You actually remember that it’s 2020 when you write the date. And you know it’s a new year when those new habits you wanted to pick up back on January 1 are as crumpled as the Happy New Year napkin that got kicked under the entertainment center. And maybe, the ugly truth of this is that you wanted to start that writing habit, but you put it off for some reason. Then the next day it was all the harder to begin. Then the next day, it’s less about starting habits than it is about shame-managing. Let’s just stop it right…
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10 Ways To Care For Yourself When You Don’t Feel Like It
Now I have a lot of reasons (including that I’m tired and strung up on Benadryl) that I would make poor choices when I am sick. How much better it would have been for me and my family had I cared for myself a little better!
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How To Control Your Emotions To Make 2020 The Best Ever!
As you edge into 2020, consider how you make your decisions. Do you make them based only on your emotions? Do you often find excuses? Do you allow your "tiredness" to keep you from following your dreams?
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When You Fear What Others Think
This blog post is hardly a cure-all (in fact, if anxiety is ruling your life, please see a mental health professional). But it will give some suggestions on how to weaken the fear of others’ approval.
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Return to the Page: Coming Back to Your Writing After a Break
OK, so you took some time away from your writing practice or your work-in-progress. Somehow, while you were gone, your work became this really huge challenging thing. Now, you feel weird and intimidated about starting again. I know how that feels! It has happened many times in my regular writing life but today it was happening to me about this blog post. Luckily, I not only worked myself out of the weirdness but I also documented my process so I can do it again. And, I offer it to you as an example of how to write yourself out of the same annoying situation. Here’s what I did, step by…
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5 Ways To Boost Your Writing Morale
Since writing can be solitary and there is often a long time between the work and the reward, it can be easy to get discouraged about the process. Here are 5 tips to help you recharge when you are a bit burnt out from your efforts. 1) Use the word YET Too often we get stuck in the idea that we will NEVER accomplish things but it can be helpful to reframe it to ‘I haven’t done it YET’ – I use this for TKD all the time. I try not to say ‘I can’t’ I spin that into ‘I can’t YET.’ because it keeps the door open for future…
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You Don’t Need Permission To Write
…but I’ll give you some anyway. The writing world is alive with the ‘rules’ of writing. Everyone and their uncle has something to say about what you should write, when you should write it, how you should write it, and why you should write it. Naturally, a lot of that advice is contradictory. After all, while we can all expand our practice and our skills, we each have to make our own way to the page. We each have our own interests, our own reasons for writing, and our own hopes for what will become of our words. But a lot of us get tangled in all of the writing…
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Be Your Own Valentine: 5 Writerly Gifts To Give Yourself Today
Even though Valentine’s Day is already here, it’s not too late to give your writerly-self. I’m sure a lot of us dream of the perfect writing lifestyle, a delightful haven in which everything contributes to our ability to surrender to our muse. Most of us, however, lead the kinds of lives where writing needs to be crammed in among a host of other things. That means that instead of giving ourselves gold pens, or exclusive writing retreats, our writerly-selves probably need more intangible but practical things – changes in attitude or approach- that would make our writing lives easier. Here are 5 of our suggestions. What would you add? Give…
