So, we teaching and coaching types love to give advice (except that the true essence of coaching is not so much giving advice as pulling what you yourself already know to be so out of yourself). I, for instance, love to tell people to do Morning Pages. (If you don't know what Morning Pages are, […]
Over the last week, I've been revisiting the writer's process. (You can get caught up on the other posts here and here.) As promised, today's post begins a look at each step of the process. And so today we talk about the fine and wonderful art of glumping. Glumping is a word that I've always […]
Behold: This is one wall of the new library in my home. Yes, I now have a library. Don't be too jealous. It took hours and hours of clearing, cleaning, and moving books and bookshelves from the living room into the room formerly known as the guest room. But it was worth it. The coolest […]
I'm spending the day writing a eulogy for a family friend. Actually, my daughter is doing much of the work and I'm helping her. The two of us are sitting in my living room, kitty cats lolling on the floor between us, basking in the warmth of the fire we've had lit all day. It […]
Worrying is not good for your writing or your creativity. Or anything else, really. How can you write the next great American novel when you are obsessing about how to pay the bills? Or if your marriage is going to survive? Or if your teenager is going to make it through high school without getting […]
I awoke at 8 this morning. Me, the dedicated early riser. The one who generally springs (okay, it is more like a shuffle) out of bed at 6 AM and starts writing. But this week, after two weddings in the family and a summer's worth of social events, organizing a writing weekend for the program […]
This is going to be a short post. My daughter is getting married tomorrow. I've written about her story on this blog before, and you can read more here, and here. But let me just say that weddings are hell on the writing schedule. As if you didn't know that. I suppose planning any event […]
Monday evening, I got sick. It had started with cold symptoms earlier that day. After dinner, I started feeling achy all over and soon I was passed out on the couch, in the full throes of a fever. Not such a big deal, right? I mean it was clearly not life-threatening and people get sick […]
Yesterday I wrote about attending the Eagles concert in Portland last Saturday night and promised real takeaways from the experience for today. So here we go: 1. Put it all out there. Writers, put it all on the page. Painters, put it all on the canvas. Musicians, all in the song. All you got, every […]
We went to the beach for a night this past weekend. But it was to a different cabin in a different town than we've ever stayed at before. We traveled down a different highway, went to different beaches, ate at different restaurants, saw different things. All of this was quite by accident, but it was […]
