Choose Your 30-Day Challenge

Will you be ready to start a 30-Day writing challenge on April 1? (And no! This is no April Fools!) You may sign up for the early morning (Harnessing the Unconscious) writing challenge. Or you may sign up for the Writing on Schedule challenge. Or feel free to sign up for both! Nuts and Bolts […]

Writing on Schedule

As I mentioned in “Harnessing the Unconscious,” Dorothea Brande claimed in her classic book Becoming a Writer that there were two distinct types of writing you must master if you hoped to have a career as an author. Whether or not both are necessary is up for grabs. However, I do know that both types […]

Harnessing the Unconscious

If you already write fluently, for hours at a time, and you can write at will whenever you choose, you don’t need today’s idea. However, if developing and then maintaining a daily writing schedule keeps eluding you, you’re in the right place. This post describes the first type of accountability challenge for April. Back to […]

Accountability: It Works!

Back in January many of you joined me in the “31 Minutes for 31 Days Challenge.” That jump started many of us for the new year. In February I did my first 28-Day Challenge with two writing friends, and March began our second 28-day Challenge. (The Challenge has been to write at least 30 minutes […]

Direction, not Intention

All of our actions have results, or consequences. That’s not news to anyone. And yet, do we act like we believe that? Not all that often. Good Intentions Too many writers (myself included sometimes) believe that if we work our hardest and try our best and keep a good attitude, we’ll end up successfully published. […]

Hatch or Go Rotten!

Sometimes we just need to get moving toward our writing dreams. “It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird; it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an […]

Finding Energy to Pursue Goals

We hear a lot about setting writing goals.  Do any of you have secret thoughts like these? Setting goals is great, but I don’t have the energy to pursue them or I’m already so exhausted that I can’t add one more thing to my life—even something I love. Is that you? Then you’ve come to the […]