I’m going to practice what I preach for the next couple of months. I talk about self-care for writers all the time. I need to take my own advice. I have trips coming up, big deadlines, and I’m dealing with some unexpected health issues. So, for the next two months, until October 1, I won’t […]
Month: July 2015
The Completion Stage
The past two weeks, I’ve talked about the stages we go through in our writing projects, including the challenges at each stage and ways to keep from derailing. After we have prepared the work-in-progress, let it germinate, worked on it, then deepened and shaped it, we are ready to complete the work. “There is a completion […]
The Deepening and Shaping Stages
In this series we’re discussing the seven specific stages you go through from beginning to end with a writing project. There is potential for both growth and failure at each stage. (First read about the preparation stage, the germination stage, and the working stage.) Deepening and Shaping At the beginning of the deepening stage, you’ve […]
The Working Stage
(Last week we started talking about the seven specific stages you go through from beginning to end with a writing project, and the potential for both growth and failure at each stage. First read about the preparation stage, then the germination stage.) The Work-Out Next we have the working stage, the one we’re probably most […]
Germination Phase
[Read about the first phase here: preparing to write.] The second stage, called the germination stage by Louise De Salvo Ph.D. in Writing as a Way of Healing, is a time “during which we gather and work on fragments of ideas, images, phrases, scenes, moments, lines, possibilities for plots, characters, settings. Sometimes we don’t quite […]
Preparing to Write
In Writing as a Way of Healing, author Louise De Salvo, Ph.D. delineates seven different stages of the creative process—and warns how we can derail our entire writing process with certain behaviors at each stage. “For our writing to be healing,” Louise says, “it’s important for us to understand that there are different stages of […]
Celebrating Freedom….for Writers
Sometimes, in order find freedom, you have to take the exit pointed out for you. Last week was one of those weeks. And at the end of this post, I’ll share with you a very easy path to the freedom to focus. Losing Focus I had reached the middle of a novel, one thoroughly plotted […]
Happy 4th of July!
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” ~~Emma Lazarus