Creative Endurance. David Yoon suggests creative endurance can be cultivated. “Grit is not a personality trait or a special skill. It’s not even all that special. Anyone can have grit because grit is simply a set of good habits.” Some excellent suggestions here. Getting Unstuck. Love these tips from Janice Hardy for how to get…
Tag: editing
Story Hoarder
I grew up in a household of mild to moderate hoarding. My mom has multiple scents of liquid hand soap for every season (and I’m not just talking the four main ones; I mean like tulip season and Advent). My dad’s hoarding reached its peak—I hope—during the pandemic, when supply chain issues prompted him to…
Writers and coffee and filters
There’s nothing like a cup of coffee to get the writing juices flowing. Ever the optimist, Albert Camus once posed the burning (or should I say, brewing) question: “Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” What the oft-quoted prolific writer, who denied he was a philosopher, seemed to say has been the…
Every author should know a guy called Joe
Last month, my wife and I closed on our new home in the village of Cedaredge on the wild Western Slope of Colorado. It’s a beautiful place with mature landscaping and spectacular views. Deer pass by, birds fill the trees, and the tumbling waters of Surface Creek flow just down the slope from our backyard….
An Unexpected Benefit of Critique Groups
We humans aren’t good at seeing our own flaws, especially in our writing. When we look at something we wrote, we know exactly what we intended to say. So when we read the words back to ourselves—get this—it makes perfect sense to us! Our brain automatically fills in any gaps, ignores the hiccups, even glosses…