The night after I agreed to contribute regularly to this column, as I tried to sleep my eyes bugged open in 3:00 a.m. panic: How will I ever get enough ideas? How will they be interesting and meaningful enough? I stared at the ceiling, grinding around for long minutes. As my worry spiral finally wound itself down, I remembered wise words by spiritual philosopher and self-help Continue Reading
Why You Should Write Yourself a Letter
When I scanned the mail the other day, one letter caught my eye. I couldn’t quite place the handwriting and tore open the letter. To my shock, I saw I’d written it to myself. Three weeks earlier, I’d received a rejection for a particularly important writing project. After I poured out my despondency to a patient friend, she suggested I write a letter of writing struggles, Continue Reading
Be a Prompt Snob…
As a writer, you’re probably familiar with writing prompts in many resources—newsletters, blogs, columns, handbooks. Prompts seem available on any subject: Prompt Boot Camp for Writing Reboots, Nine Months of Pregnant Prompts, Desolate Dystopian Prompts, Romance Writers’ Raised-Skirt Prompts, Who Prompted the Murder Mystery Prompts. Whatever writing ill ails you, Continue Reading
Resuscitate Your Writing Heart…
Depressed about your writing? Buried under an avalanche of rejections? Ready to unsubscribe from your own email and pursue a career in storage unit construction? You need to resuscitate your writing heart. What’s that? Your writing heart is what makes you write and keep coming back to writing. If you feel you don't have one, you do. If you feel you haven't written Continue Reading