Writing
Six Things To Do If You’re Having Trouble Finishing Your Work
Here’s the list: (1) Show it! Often we procrastinate because we’re afraid to show our work to anyone. (“Afraid” is probably putting it lightly—we’re often terrified.) So stop hoarding your work and start showing it. But be judicious: there’s no point in showing to clueless or callous people. Show only to kind supporters who “get”…
Read MoreDo 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 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 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…
Read MoreWhy “Positive Procrastination” is (Mostly) a Scam
Every week, it seems, someone publishes an article about how procrastination can be good for you. This week it’s The New York Times. I am all about using whatever productivity techniques work for you. But in my experience pro-procrastination techniques work for very few people, and are actually more likely to undermine your productivity than…
Read MoreHow John Scalzi Meets His Deadlines
This week, bestselling author John Scalzi blogged about how he’s going to meet his 2016 deadlines: “For me, the major problem is not writer’s block or plot issues or anything structural involving the novel; I generally don’t have problems with those once I start, and with this new novel, thankfully, I didn’t have any real…
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