Charlotte Rains Dixon

A Love Letter About the Sneakiness of Discouragement

I tend to get all excited about things and plunge in. Like, say, an idea for a new book. Or an article or blog post. Or a whole new business. Or a knitted item. I can see it all from start to finish. The end result is enshrined in my mind, surrounded with golden butterflies, […]

Charlotte Rains Dixon 6 years ago05/17/2019

Uncategorized

A Love Letter About Creating a Container For Your Writing

A brief note: I’ve been having trouble with my website host, which is why I haven’t posted here for a couple of weeks. I’m doing a lot of blogging over at Medium, and you can see my posts here. I’ll keep posting my Love Letter every Sunday, but look for lots more articles about writing, […]

Charlotte Rains Dixon 7 years ago05/04/2019

Uncategorized

A Love Letter About Challenging Yourself

I went camping this weekend. I am not a camper. I am a person who loves to stay in hotels, motels, and inns. Where there are rooms with warm, soft beds, a bar in the lobby to get a drink, maybe even a nice restaurant. Or even a crummy one. I like comfort and convenience, […]

Charlotte Rains Dixon 7 years ago

Uncategorized

A Love Letter About Thinking Your Best Writing Thoughts

The writer’s brain can play tricks on you. At least mine does. It has a lousy memory. And it skews toward the negative when it is recalling things like the quality of my work. As in, I think about a story I’ve been working on and groan. It’s so bad, I think. It will never […]

Charlotte Rains Dixon 7 years ago04/06/2019

Love letters

A Love Letter About Writing Conferences

I am brain dead. I’m writing this love letter on Saturday morning, so that I can get it scheduled for release on Sunday. And for the last two days I’ve been at a writing conference. I’ll be returning for another dip this afternoon. It’s not just any conference, it’s AWP. AWP. Often the name is […]

Charlotte Rains Dixon 7 years ago03/31/2019

Love letters

A Love Letter About Prompts, Writing Exercises, and Morning Pages

I’m reading The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life, by Marion Roach Smith, which I find charming in many ways. It is a slim volume by a popular writing teacher which has many good ideas for memoir writers. In it, the author rants against the use of prompts, writing exercises, and […]

Charlotte Rains Dixon 7 years ago06/03/2021

Love letters

A Love Letter About Envy, The Bad Kind and The Good Kind

Here’s a short list of people I envy: All writers everywhere on the planet who have a book contract with a major publishing house. All successful self-published writers. All writers who have control of their own schedules, i.e., plenty of time to write. All writers who do not live with seven- and three-year-old boy hooligans. […]

Charlotte Rains Dixon 7 years ago03/16/2019

Uncategorized

A Love Letter About Imposter Syndrome

I’m an imposter. That’s what the thoughts running through my head as I wrote this morning told me. I’m not a real writer, I thought as I wrote dialogue between two brothers sitting at a coffee shop. This as I finished up Chapter Eight of a book I started in January. (I now date my […]

Charlotte Rains Dixon 7 years ago03/01/2019

Love letters

Writing in Chaos (A Love Letter)

My life is chaos and distraction at the moment. As many of you know, my daughter and her husband and two boys are living with us while we build an addition, after which my hub and I will move into that space and they will take over the main house. As if living with a […]

Charlotte Rains Dixon 7 years ago02/22/2019

Uncategorized

Writing in Community (A Love Letter)

The first week in February, I was in fun, funky Astoria, Oregon to co-lead a writing workshop. Fabulous week with marvelous writers. The only downside was that after a mild winter, snow suddenly loomed in the forecast, so we left a couple days early—but not before finishing the workshop. There were eight of us, and […]

Charlotte Rains Dixon 7 years ago02/16/2019

Looking for a Great Read? Look No Further!