Several days this week I was tired and headache-y, yet I needed to get some writing done. I don’t know about you, but I find writing a grueling challenge on the rare days I feel rotten. That’s why I found one particular chapter in The Write Type by Karen E. Peterson very encouraging. The author […]
writing anxiety
Getting Unstuck after 2020
After losing two family members in the pandemic, I had a month-long severe reaction this spring to my second Covid shot. When I resurfaced, feeling practically comatose, I was behind on one Christmas mystery book deadline and a novel (set in 1850s England.) None of my decades-old “get started” techniques worked, which induced a near […]
From Panic to Focus: Save Your Writing Project
In the fall of 2019 I spent several weeks researching a mystery series set in a small village in the North Yorkshire Dales. The locals who own the shops depend on tourist trade from daily bus tours and mountain bike groups. In early 2020 villagers sent out a plea for the tourists to please stay […]
Wounds from the Game of Writing: Earning Battle Scars
Wounds: we all get them. During the 1988 Jamboree encampment of 32,000 Boy Scouts, one troop (38 Scouts) led the entire Jamboree in cuts treated at the medical tent. The huge number of nicks from busy knives sounded negative until someone toured the camp and saw the unique artistic walking sticks each boy in that […]
Inner Critics: Valuable Editor or Time Waster?
Writers are opinionated people. Our brains never seem to stop. We criticize because we “know” how things and people should be. This “critical editor component” of our personality is absolutely invaluable to the editing and revision process. If you can’t spot what’s wrong with a manuscript, you can’t fix it. However, this same critical ability can […]
Unhappiness: a Positive Sign for Writers
Have you ever considered the fact that unhappiness is the first step along the writer’s path? “Toddlers are bursting with the anxiety and helplessness of having feelings that they can’t get anybody around them to understand. They don’t even have the right words in their heads yet—it’s all emotion and frustration. That’s also an accurate […]
Writing Under the Influence and Its Effect on Creativity
Back in high school, I watched people transform from shy wallflowers to social butterflies by drinking. They grew talkative and tried things they would never have done sober. Being under the influence didn’t truly help them, although they swore it did. Being under the influence doesn’t help a writer’s creativity either. [And that includes many other things […]
Perfectionist Writers
Does perfectionism keep you from getting started on your writing? Does trying to write your best create pressure for you? If you, you’ll be encouraged something in Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It’s about being a perfectionist–and how to deal with the pressure […]
Facing Your Creative Fears (Part 2)
(First read Part 1 of “Facing Your Creative Fears.”) 3. Third, if your fears are real, face them squarely and deal with them. Do you really lack sufficient writing skills? If so, enroll in a course. Study writing books on your own. Analyze the books you love best to see how those authors did what […]
Facing Your Creative Fears
“Every tomorrow has two handles,” Henry Ward Beecher once said. “We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.” I’ve been thinking about this while hostessing the October and November writing challenges and reading between the lines of some questions and comments. It’s a Choice…Really! All our writing […]