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Posts from the ‘Writing Life’ Category

Oct 3

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Five fixes for creative anxiety

Do you ever feel creative anxiety? Your brain is buzzing, and you’re spinning your creative wheels faster than your feet can pedal. You’re just plain fried.

I’ve analyzed this malady to see what causes it, as well as what fixes it.

  1. You’re looking at the project as a whole instead of bite-sized pieces. Change how you think about your work. If you’re struggling with where to start or the enormity of what you’re doing, don’t try to attack it all at once. Focus on one piece, whether it’s writing one stellar sentence or one excellent chapter. As Anne Lamott said, “bird by bird.” Read more

Sep 30

Where do you find the music of opportunity and the sound of potential?

We all get bogged down by life sometimes: work, bills, the car dying (again), a friend’s unexpected illness. Life happens. Death is inevitable. It’s the in-between spaces where we make our life count.

On a daily basis, I try to never lose sight of why I do what I do. Why do I write? What am I passionate about? How can I contribute?

If we look closely, we can find the music of opportunity and the sound of potential in the most unexpected places—as in the life of musician Patrick Henry Hughes. Watch his video here:

Sep 27

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Get in your writing groove with a dance break

As important as it is to get in the zone when you’re writing, it’s equally important to get out of your chair once in awhile and shake yourself up a bit.

That’s where the writer’s dance break comes in.

Even Daniel Pinkwater, author of “The Neddiad: How Neddie Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Saved Civilization,” took breaks from writing to stomp around outside. In describing how he wrote The Neddiad, Pinkwater said: Read more

Sep 22

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When do you call yourself a writer?

Some days, it seems as if everybody thinks they’re a writer. A few years back I was visiting my mother-in-law in Cherry Valley, California, where I spent the mornings writing at a local Starbucks. As I sat outside sipping my latte and working on my laptop, at least five people a day approached me to ask what I was doing. When I said I was a writer, most of the people proceeded to sit down and tell me their own writing dreams. Guess I just have one of those faces.

One woman, a teacher, hoped to retire and write full time. One man had already published a technical book but really wanted to write fantasy. Another man said, “Oh, my sister is a writer, too.” When I asked him what she wrote, he replied, “Oh, nothing yet. But she’s going to start soon.” Read more

Sep 20

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Three ways to feed your muse: writing away procrastination, Part 3

Throughout history, artists have called their sources of inspiration many things: ego, God, muse, daemon, genius, angel, their higher-self, or as Edwin Land, American scientist and inventor once said, creativity is simply, “a brief cessation in stupidity.”

Most days I feel about as creative as a slug on a morphine drip.

I have to fight for my creativity. I have to force myself to stay in my chair and to stay writing. Some writers call it “bum glue”—writing something without getting up twenty times to stare longingly at the chocolate pudding inside the fridge.

Why is it so hard to stay focused? Usually there’s a reason.

Yes, I run my own business and I have a zillion busy things to do each day. And, trust me, I’ve used that excuse a zillion and a half times to avoid my writing. But why do I find so many excuses to avoid what I love to do most in the world? Mostly, I think, it comes down to fear.

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Sep 15

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Find your story’s emotional throughline

Even though I didn’t fully realize it at the time, an incident as a teenaged babysitter taught me one of my first lessons about subtext and story.

I was babysitting a nine-year-old boy who was literally out of control, a human tornado. He wouldn’t listen. I had plenty of babysitting experience, but I’d never dealt with a child like this. At one point, he found a cigarette lighter and before I could grab it from him, he’d flicked it on and burned his hand.

Later that day, after I had gone home and was walking down the street with a friend, the boy’s mother drove by. She stopped and started screaming at me about her son’s injury. While it wasn’t good that he had hurt himself, her response was extreme for the superficial nature of the burn. I tried to explain how hard it was to manage him, but she just drove away. Read more

Sep 9

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Did you write today? Put a star on your calendar

I love it when I find another writer who has a ritual or a way of thinking about writing that I share. It’s one more way of feeling connected to a community. This week, I had one of those moments when I read an interview with writer John Reimringer. 

In The Aroostook Review, the online literary journal at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, Reimringer speaks about the practice of writing, how he got into it, and his routines and rituals. One especially struck me because it’s a ritual I’ve done in the past with working out and one I now do with my writing practice.

I give myself a star for each day I write.

I like to use a calendar that shows a month and has big enough squares for the stars. Something about seeing those stars pushes me forward. I like to look back and see my writing history at a glance. If you post your calendar in a place where you work, it can even become a conversation starter. I’ve influenced more than one person to start marking their writing progress with stars. (It’s actually a good way to mark any progress toward a goal, not just writing.)

Reimringer and his wife, poet Katrina Vandenberg, do something similar. Read more

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