We are responsible for the effort, not the outcome. —Unknown I once heard a doctor from Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin say that they cannot guarantee outcomes, but they can guarantee that the medical staff will give 100 percent effort. When writing is not going well, rejection letters are flowing in or, worse yet, you hear...Read More
No wonder so many adults long to return to university, to all those deadlines–ahhh, that structure! Scaffolding to which we may cling! Even if it is arbitrary, without it, we’re lost, wholly incapable of separating the Romantic from the Victorian in our sad, bewildering lives… —Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics Learning to...Read More
Over the summer, I read a blog post on Life Hacker by James Clear: You Have 25,000 Mornings as an Adult. Here’s How Not to Waste Them. As a guilt-ridden midwestern girl, I had to read it. In the article, Clear offers much of the same advice I’ve shared here in the blog: manage energy...Read More
On Monday, as I scrambled to finish an editing project, get the kids ready for school, and put together a newsletter—I felt stressed. I wasn’t sure how I’d finish it all. And then my computer crashed. In the 48 hours between crash and rescue, I whined and worried about losing data, finishing projects, and spending...Read More
Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing. —E.L. Doctorow When I was in college and graduate school, we all procrastinated. We put off studying and paper writing in favor of talking about esoteric subjects and making mischief. We pulled all-nighters...Read More
When we commit ourselves to writing for some part of each day we are happier, more enlightened, alive, lighthearted and generous to everyone else. Even our health improves. –Brenda Ueland In June, I took my son to a Switchfoot concert. In the middle of their show, the lead singer talked about leaving their record company,...Read More
What would your shoes say about the things you do everyday? —Sherley Mondesir-Prescott In late June I went shoe shopping. Now ordinarily, I love to shop for shoes. But I’d been to three different DSW stores on four different occasions in two weeks, trying to find shoes. My birthday coupon (five dollars!) expired in four...Read More
The most important thing is to hold on, hold out, for your creative life, for your solitude, for your time to be and do, for your very life. —Clarissa Pinkola Estes Stephen King writes every day, with the goal of writing ten pages a day. Hemingway wrote early in the morning, to avoid the heat,...Read More
When seeking guidance, don’t ever listen to the tiny-hearted. Be kind to them, heap them with blessing, cajole them, but do not follow their advice. —Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype It’s hard work—this writing thing. Dreaming up whole towns, knowing where folks gather for...Read More
If I have ten minutes I use them even if they bring only two lines, and it keeps the book alive. —Rumer Godden. So how do you write when you have no time? That’s not a stupid question. We all encounter periods when we have no time to write. At times, between managing work, home, family...Read More
