Me: early this morning, working on my novel. Staring at the words on the screen, wondering if I should add a sentence about the hero’s past. Thinking it might be too much. And then it hit me. I have a freaking delete button. It is really freaking easy to write the sentence I’m not sure […]
Feel the fear and do it anyway is one of the great all-time phrases ever. And I certainly can’t take credit for the words. It was the title of a book that came out years ago, by Susan Jeffers, and I clutched that book to me like a life raft at the time. I was […]
I’m just going to come right out and say it: focus drive the fear away. Yup, it does. Because when you are focused in the moment, you are connected with your work. You’re not thinking about the past, the 100th rejection you just got on your novel, or how the essay you’re working on refuses […]
What Who I'm in Love With: My new grandson, Owen Lewis Hopman, born October 13, thus becoming the 9th Libra among our extended family and friends. He was two weeks overdue, and I'm convinced that he just wanted to make certain he had his very own birthday, rather than sharing it with a grandfather, grandmother, father or uncle […]
Note: I grew up in the printing plant my father owned, and he had a whole stack of pads titled While You Were Out, with check boxes and lines to fill in about things that happened in his absence. I am going to be out for a few days at a wedding, so I thought I'd fun […]
I wrote a guest post for Jessica Baverstock at Creativity's Workshop on the writer's Inner GPS, our internal guidance system that is never wrong and can help us greatly with our writing. (You can go read it now, I'll wait.) And because of that, I started thinking a lot about the Inner Critic, which is […]
When I was invited to speak to the Living Writer's Collective in Tennessee a couple of weeks ago, my topic was the Fear of Writing. The subject was enthusiastically received, with several writers sheepishly admitting to me that they suffered from it (and Lord knows I've dealt with it off and on throughout my career), […]
For the last two years, I've been in the habit of choosing three words to guide my next year. (You can read the posts explaining my word choices for 2012 here, a check-in post here, and the words for 2011 here. For another blogger's take on the process, check out Sandra's post at Always Well […]
We don't always think of fear and focus at the same time, but there's very good reason to pair them. Focus. It's what we all desire, what gets the writing done. Because the words don't go on the page without it. Fear. It's often what keeps us from focusing. The kinds of fears we writers […]
A few years ago, I helped my friend Suzanne sell her photographs at art fairs. The photos were gorgeous shots of flowers, spectacular close-ups. People would walk by and say, "I don't need to buy one of those, I could take a photo like that." Um, really? You could get the settings on the camera […]
