Warning: Two Toxic Areas in Your Writing Life

I am fascinated by brain books for the layman, and seeing how that information applies to writers. (See three book links at the end.) Information from the new brain research–if actually applied–could change your writing life. One book, Who Switched Off Your Brain?, deals with what the author calls “the Dirty Dozen” areas in our lives […]

Resting and Reflecting Before Re-Aligning

Since I last posted regularly, I’ve written three books (two adult mysteries and one juvenile nonfiction book), traveled, and been sick. The holidays blurred by, to be honest, because one of the book deadlines was December 20th. Two days ago I finished the second adult mystery. One good thing about being sick is all the […]

The Power of Intermittent Recovery

HAPPY NEW YEAR! From the book The Power of Full Engagement: To be an effective energy manager, you need to spend nearly all of your time fully engaged in the high positive energy quadrant or recovering your energy by spending time doing things in the low positive energy quadrant. Definition of Terms The low positive […]

Self-Care for Writers Series

If your year has included sickness and/or a lot of deadlines, and you’re dragging yourself into the New Year, I want to point you to a series on self-care for writers. I am making self-care my “push goal” for 2016. (Michael Hyatt calls a push goal the one goal that, if you met it, would […]

Writers Running on Adrenaline

What fuel are you running on? Many writers these days are frantically running from place to place, working too many hours, volunteering for too many projects, working nights and weekends hoping for approval. On top of that, in order to write, they are fueled by sugar, caffeine, cigarettes and adrenaline to keep going. Long-Term Damage […]

A Writing Retreat Re-Defined

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 […]

Retreat Time: Is It Possible?

While recovering from an illness I picked up simply (I believe) from being exhausted, I was going through my favorite writing books. One caught my eye and created an instant longing: The Writer’s Retreat Kit: A Guide for Creative Exploration and Personal Expression by Judy Reeves. It’s like a writer’s retreat in a box, with […]