Last weekend I spoke at a writers’ conference, and my last talk was on self-coaching and self-care. If no one else got anything valuable from the talk, I did. I realized as I preached about self-care for writers that my own had slipped badly. That was part of the reason I was talking armed with […]
Kristi Holl
Jealousy: Conquering the Green-Eyed Monster
Last weekend, I went to a 75th Anniversary showing of “Gone With the Wind” in a local theater. It was a treat! After the Civil War ended, Scarlet OHara nearly starved with her family on their broken down plantation while she burned with jealousy toward anyone who still had money. Later, after marrying Rhett Butler, […]
Writing Fast or Writing Slow: Which is Better?
I’ve always been a fan of writing rough drafts at high speed. Turn off that internal editor! Get those words down as fast as you can! Don’t read anything till you get to the end. And after absorbing Anne Lamott’s classic book on writing, Bird by Bird, I gave myself permission to write really rotten […]
Drains in Disguise
I was wrong–again. For twenty years, I’ve told students and wannabe writers that you have to put the writing first! Do it before other things take over your day. Fight the impulse to clean your kitchen first, or straighten your office, or clean up the mess the kids made before leaving for school. “But I […]
Stuck in the Writing Doldrums?
In the midst of the doldrums, our writing lives come to a standstill. We stop writing, reading craft books and magazines, journaling, critiquing, and researching. There is actually a place near the equator named the Doldrums. Because of shifting winds and calm spots in the area, a sailboat caught in the Doldrums could be stranded […]
Your Best Promotional Tool
Every week I get questions like this: “I don’t have a book out yet [or my first book came out last year], but do you think I need to have a website, a blog, a newsletter, be on Facebook and LinkedIn and Goodreads, and also tweet on Twitter daily? Is all this self-promotion necessary?” I […]
A Call to Excellence
Have you lost your passion for writing? Is it harder to get to work than it used to be? Is it writer’s block or burnout? Not necessarily. You may have lost your passion for writing because you’ve lost your passion for excellence. In the beginning of my writing career, even though I was tripping over […]
Beware! Burnout Ahead!
Published writers, beware! “Writing is not everything,” Lisa Shearin said in a 2010 Writer Magazine. “And if you want longevity in this business, play isn’t just important–it’s critical. We get so intensely focused on having achieved the dream and working so hard to keep the dream going, that we’re blind to the signs that if […]
Building Writing Muscle
Some years ago the doctor was considering surgery on my elbow. Why? Because I had damaged the joint with a weights routine that was too heavy…way too heavy. I thought I’d make up for a late start and build up my skinny arms overnight. Instead, for a while I couldn’t lift anything as heavy as […]
Courage and Confidence
When it comes to your writing, do you ever have a crisis of confidence? It can come from a number of things: destructive (instead of constructive) criticism in your critique group, months and years of rejections (from editors and/or agents), poor reviews or sales when you finally get published, and put-downs from family or friends […]