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The Fine Art of Noticing

First, A Story Every year, a friend of mine organizes a staff Christmas party for her one-person business. She calls it the Company of One Christmas Party, which I think is a brilliant name. The first year she was indeed alone, and she posted a photo of her solo lunch on social media. She talked about what a great time she had, how important it is to celebrate milestones as a solo-preneur, even (or perhaps especially), those milestones that no… Read More »The Fine Art of Noticing

Notebook, candle, mug, pens on a table

The Myth of Productivity (Or…Don’t Just Do It)

Just as I was getting ready to write this post about resistance and how I’ve learned to overcome it over the years, I smacked right up against a brand new brick wall around my own work in progress. Funny how that works. When I first started taking my writing seriously, I had one day a week to write. At the time, it felt like a minor miracle. On Fridays, our older son had a full day of kindergarten. We managed… Read More »The Myth of Productivity (Or…Don’t Just Do It)

The Bad News for Writers

Way back in the Before Times, when we were allowed to gather in groups, I taught a writing workshop in a library. I called it, ‘Get Your Work Done,’ and we covered all the things that get in the way of writing. What is it that stops writers, or would-be-writers, from getting down to the work they are so drawn to? In my last post, I talked about the importance of scheduling writing time and showing up for yourself, session… Read More »The Bad News for Writers

The Myth of Flow

I first started taking my writing seriously in 2006 after spectacularly walking out of my day job. I had one week of day care that was already paid for, and after that my day job would become parenting two pre-schoolers. Any writing would happen while they were sleeping. A novel had been developing inside me for almost a year. I worked in a brewery and, inside my head, I plotted out a mystery novel set in a brewery as I… Read More »The Myth of Flow

Why is Writing SO Hard?

As I write this, the sky is filled with smoke from fires in Washington and Oregon, smoke that is reaching all the way across Canada. It’s hard to go outside, even to walk to the car, never mind go for a walk. Living in a rural area, the fact that we can still get outside and hike, go to the beach and the many parks in this area has made the pandemic somewhat bearable. Now it really feels like the… Read More »Why is Writing SO Hard?

Five Reasons I Hate Giving Publishing Advice

(It’s not that I don’t want to help you. Honest.) You’ve just finished a writing project that you’ve been working on for months, or years. It was way harder than you ever expected and finishing it was a damn miracle. Now you’re done and you’re looking around and saying, now what? How do you get this thing you worked so hard on published? And then you remember that author you know, or the one your friend said they knew. They… Read More »Five Reasons I Hate Giving Publishing Advice