The writing is flowing, you’re accomplishing your daily word counts, you’re in the flow! Then, without warning, you take a nose dive. You spiral downward to crash and burn. Your writing comes to a screeching halt. Why? Silent Sabotage This phenomenon happens when we least expect it. Silent sabotage comes in many varieties. Here are […]
Month: January 2014
Learned Optimism
Are you a pessimist? You might be surprised. Choosing to be an optimist, according to author Randy Ingermanson, can change your writing life. Read his article below, reprinted with permission. It’s long–but worth it! (By the way, I whole-heartedly endorse this book, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life.) What’s Holding You Back? […]
The Vicious Procrastination Cycle
Because I have a tight deadline, and I also need to go to bed early for a race I’m running in the morning, I am going to re-run a popular article from a few years ago on the procrastination cycle. It will bear repeating! ****************************** There’s more to dealing with procrastination than snarling at yourself […]
Pulling Weeds and Planting Flowers
Writers are good at pulling up weeds, but they sometimes forget to keep going and plant flowers in the dirt. After you pull weeds, don’t forget to plant flowers. Many writers in December and January talked about their goals for the new year. Many are working hard to break habits that keep them from their […]
Make Good Use of Your (Over)Reacting Habit
“10 Habits of a Successful Writer” was the article title in the writer’s magazine. Same old, same old, I thought, intending to skip over it. After all, I knew the rules by heart: write every day, write what you know, write first in the day, etc. Then I glanced at the actual list of writing […]
Writer Diagnosis: Failure to Thrive
“Psychologists have begun to speak of what is perhaps the largest mental health problem in our day. It is not depression or anxiety, at least not at clinical levels. It is languishing—a failure to thrive.” ~~John Ortberg, The Me I Want to Be We usually associate this languishing “failure to thrive” with newborns. But we […]