Productivity
Do You Have a “Room of ReQUIETment?”
Continuing on last week’s Harry Potter theme, I want to ask you: Do you have a “Room of ReQUIETment?” Of course that’s a play on Room of Requirement, the fantastic room at Hogwarts that could be anything, supply anything, a student needed. Back in 1929, Virginia Woolf published A Room of One’s Own, which discussed,…
Read MoreOn Trying to Write While Sitting in the Midst of the Battle of Hogwarts
An author friend of mine recently wrote on Facebook (and gave me kind permission to post): “Almost impossible to work these days. It feels like I’m sitting in the entrance hall of Hogwarts trying to write…while the final battle with Voldemort and the Death Eaters is raging around me.” She’s not alone. Recently YouTube celebrity…
Read MoreAn Insanely Simple Tip That Will Make Your Writing Sessions Fly
Ditch your clock! I mean at your workspace. I got this idea this summer, when I was doing a lot of tabling (at the farmers market, PRIDE festival, etc.) for our group Vegan Kalamazoo. Each gig was between three and six hours. On days when I wore my watch or kept my cell phone on,…
Read MoreBeware Post-Summer Situational Perfectionism!
A few people have told me they’ve been having trouble getting back to work after summer vacation. They’re telling themselves (and others, unfortunately, are also telling them) stuff like: “Okay, summer’s over. I’ve had my break. Now, I’d better get back to work. In fact, I need to work extra hard to make up for…
Read MoreUpdate! And Why Self-Censorship Doesn’t Work
I hope everyone had a great summer! I continue to thrive in Kalamazoo. You haven’t heard much from me, lately, for a few reasons: I’ve been busy working on my next book, a version of The 7 Secrets of the Prolific just for undergraduate students. (More on this in future newsletters.) The local vegan group…
Read MoreExclusive: Sharon Shinn’s Time Management Tips!
I was recently thrilled to have the opportunity to interview bestselling fantasy / science fiction / romance / young adult novelist Sharon Shinn. Why all the genres? She’s incredibly prolific. Moreover, she’s prolific while holding down a full-time job. A writing job! It’s just incredible. I just had to find out how she does it–especially because she also happens…
Read MoreCleveland Events: Saturday 4/23 and Sunday 4/24
Saturday, April 23, 10:00 a.m. to Noon in Cleveland, Ohio at Literary Cleveland at Lake Erie Ink, Hillary is presenting Joyful Writing Productivity. Inspiration exists and is available to everyone at any time. Under-productivity, procrastination, and blocks are solvable problems. The secret to achieving a state of near-perpetual inspiration (a.k.a., “flow”) is to switch from…
Read MoreHarper Lee, “Second Novel Syndrome,” and Situational Perfectionism
Harper Lee, author of the immortal To Kill a Mockingbird, died last week at 89. She never published another book except for Go Set a Watchman, which was published in 2015 in what many consider to be dubious circumstances. Lee may have suffered from second-novel syndrome, a form of procrastination in which an author becomes…
Read MoreWhy We’re Such Poor Appreciators of Our Own Work
Here is a delightful two-minute film from Derek Sivers which discusses why we often fail to fully appreciate our own work. It also explains why it’s a bad idea to compare your work with that of a famous person. Comparisons are perfectionist, but comparing yourself to someone famous is especially problematic because of what you’re…
Read MoreIf We Could Turn Back Time: Cher Models Nonperfectionism!
I’ve always loved Cher’s tweets: they’re so playful and sincere, even when she’s making a sharp political point, which she does often. So naturally, I loved this New York Times piece about her Twitter style: She pays little to no attention to rules of grammar, like punctuation or sentence structure, and she capitalizes many words…
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