The Joys of Being a Late Bloomer

This piece originally appeared on the blog of The Woman and the Owl Foundation, a fantastic group that, “explores and encourages the development of women spiritual leaders of all faiths and backgrounds through education, community, and support.” I also did a video interview with them which you’ll find here. Many thanks to Jessamine Dana for…

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Some Awesome Links and See You in Colorado and Missouri!

Busy preparing for my Colorado and Missouri trip. As my Facebook friends know—and, by the way, you’re invited to become one—I’ve morphed into a mushroom fanatic since moving to the midwest, and will be attending the Telluride Mushroom Festival. Oh yeah, and I’ll also be giving a bunch of writing-productivity and joyful-activism workshops, and would…

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The Problem With Daily Word Counts

This list of the daily word counts of famous authors has been making the rounds. The top producers, by far, are the late thriller writer Michael “Jurassic Park” Crichton and the late British historical novelist R. F. Delderfield, who both apparently wrote 10,000 words a day. Then we’ve got one 6,000-word-a-day chap (thriller writer John Creasy), a…

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Marriage Equality and How to Cope with Success-Related Losses

Last week was amazing, here in the U.S. We started with despair (at the murder of the nine black parishioners by a Confederate-flag-wearing white supremacist in Charleston), followed by hope (a newfound widespread rejection of said flag), relief (the Supreme Court ruling preserving the Obamacare subsidies), and, finally, jubilation (the ruling establishing marriage equality as…

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Productivity Tips from Alex the Parrot

I just finished reading Irene Pepperberg’s wonderful book Alex & Me, about her work and relationship with Alex, the African Grey parrot who became internationally renowned for his cognitive and communications skills, including being able to hold simple conversations, spell simple words, and do simple math. Turns out he could procrastinate, too. One problem Pepperberg…

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Upcoming Workshops and Classes (May – July 2015)

Online, July 6 – August 3 The 7 Secrets of the Prolific: The Basics of Joyful Production SavvyAuthors.com More info / To register Inspiration exists and is available to everyone at almost any time. Underproductivity, procrastination, and blocks are solvable problems. The secret to achieving a state of near-perpetual inspiration (a.k.a., “flow”) is to switch…

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Exclusive! John Scalzi’s Time Management and Career Tips

Last week, the publishing world was abuzz with the news that bestselling science fiction author John Scalzi signed a movie-star-like $3.4 million publishing deal for 10 books. Scalzi is someone I admire enormously, not just for his writing and career success, but because he’s a genuinely nice guy, both offline (I’ve seen him at science fiction conventions)…

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Don’t Let Unintended/Unwanted Consequences Hold Back Your Projects

Reblogged from the Thesis Whisperer. The anonymous author of this piece, originally entitled “What’s it like to Finish?”, does a great job of articulating how even a great success, like finishing a thesis, will almost always yield some unwanted consequences. Often we at least intuit these, and the fear of them can cause us to…

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