As anyone who who is a creative person or artist knows from experience, putting your work in front of others can be a terrifying experience. You spend days, months, or even years creating this thing that you love. You pour your heart and soul (and some sweat and tears) into it. You polish it, make… Continue reading On Rejection…
I’m sure every writer has been there. You’re drained. You don’t want write. In fact, you don’t want to do anything at all. But you’ve told yourself you must. Perhaps you set yourself a word count goal for the day, or you aim to write a specific number of days per week, or maybe you… Continue reading The Blinking Cursor on the Blank Page
I’ll be honest, I haven’t been writing or editing for the last month. A lot of “life stuff” has been happening, which is a handy excuse, but more to the point I have a bad case of the “I don’t wanna’s”. What I have been doing well is procrastinating. I finished one TV series (Primeval)… Continue reading Procrastination and Deadlines
I have been writing for a long time (fifteen years or so, I think…?). For the majority of that time, I’ve done it almost exclusively for myself, not allowing more than a select few people to read what I wrote, and even those few haven’t read all of my books. In the semi-recent past (about… Continue reading On Utter Exhaustion
In early December I submitted a manuscript to a publisher. Just yesterday, I received an email stating that the publisher was not currently interested in my manuscript. I have to admit this was expected as, even though I’ve been writing for a long time, I’m new at attempting to get published. I’m sure I still… Continue reading On Rejection
I’m a relative newcomer to submitting to writing contests. I entered one last fall, and received my feedback and results in December. Just last week, I submitted to my second, the Golden Heart competition. The Golden Heart is a competition put on by Romance Writers of America (RWA) for unpublished authors. It’s the last year… Continue reading Stepping Outside My Comfort Zone
I would love to be a full-time author. However, as with many (dare I say most?) other authors, I have a career that takes much of my time. That means that when I would love nothing more than to spend all day writing or really digging into editing or brainstorming, I usually have to say… Continue reading Writing With a Full-Time Career
I never used to believe in writer’s block. I always seem to have so many story ideas it feels like I’ll never get a chance to write them all unless I clone myself (I still don’t have that technology, sorry). Writer’s block always seemed like an excuse, or like maybe the story or the project… Continue reading Writer’s Block vs. Lack of Motivation
A few months ago I entered my first writing contest, the results of which just came out. I wasn’t a finalist (which wasn’t a surprise since it was my first contest), but they did provide feedback and scores. The feedback was helpful, and mostly constructive, even if I didn’t agree with all of it. The… Continue reading Writing Contests
I haven’t yet met or heard of a single writer or artist that isn’t, at least occasionally, plagued by fear, doubt, and uncertainty. Creative endeavors are unlike logical pursuits like math. In math, you add 2 + 2, and if your answer isn’t 4, you know definitively that you’ve done something wrong. Writing, like most… Continue reading Fear, Doubt and Uncertainty
