Join me for a tour of Paris’ finest female writers and St. Germain’s tasty Patisseries
“One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice…”
The best, most lightbulby and least precious post about the craft of writing that you’ll read today.
Do you have a passion for storytelling but less so for marketing? Read on for a simple plan for identifying your brand.
You’ve always wanted to be a writer. You have a head or notebook full of ideas, you read stories or watch movies and feel inspired, maybe you’ve even started your own article, short story, novel, or memoir. But then you get stopped somewhere short of your dream. You tell yourself you don’t have the skill or the time, and that maybe someday…
Do you want uninterrupted space and an extended time period to focus on your writing project? While a writing retreat can provide that, this year you might not have the time or budget to partake in one. Instead, consider creating your very own personal writing retreat.
Much as a pearl necklace is created by each individual pearl strung along with the next, novels are simply a collection of scenes. Each one must be unique, valuable, and as near perfect as possible if you want that necklace to last. Read on to find how to do that.
Live in the now. Practice gratitude, be self-aware, laugh at any opportunity, ally with those fighting the good fight, and create art. It's not easy, but it is the point. At least that's what the guy in my basement told me.
Is it enough to follow your dream, part-time and safely, or is that selling out, and will it guarantee you never reach your dream?
Do you need a life reset?
I sometimes get paralyzed by the thought that I can’t do everything and so shouldn’t do anything, or even worse (to my mind), that I’m not allowed to enjoy the good when there is so much bad
Claim your voice, claim your bravery, and look for the gifts that will start flowing in.
If you've never written creatively before, this course include supplements to orient you to the basics. If you're an experienced creative writer, this course will show you how to deepen your writing by infusing it with transformative personal experience.
There is power in telling our stories, either in memoir, or fiction, or even writing them onto a piece of paper that we burn up immediately after.
Here's something they don't cover in driver's ed: what do you do when you find yourself on a lonely country road with a live wild bird magically trapped in an inaccessible part of your vehicle?
"If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people." –Virginia Woolf
In his book, Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, expressive therapy pioneer Dr. James Pennebaker devotes several chapters to the history and power of personal honesty. Per his extensive studies, all humans have inappropriate thoughts, fears, and uncomfortable memories. The best way to move past them is to travel through them.
In other words, you must confess.
Writing is one of the most amazing things out there. Where else can you watch a free movie in your head? Writing has also put me in touch with forgotten emotions and healing insights. Honestly, I'm not sure why this free therapy isn't hyped more often—writing is so cathartic.
I imagine that I'll wrestle with Shame at the beginning of every new project I write (he loses his seat at the table around page 100, dunno why), and I'll have to fight myself back to this place each time. But here’s what *I* know, and what I forget with each book I write: there is only one cure for the shame, and it is this: word count.
It takes a village to raise a writer, which is why I’m passing on the two best pieces of writing advice I’ve ever heard, one from Carolyn Hart and the other from Elizabeth Gilbert.
To reach and fix the foundation, you must start from the outside and work your way in.