This past month I hit a wall in my work-in-progress. I really struggled revising the end of a chapter and making it feel ~complete. What I wrote was fine, but it wasn’t really good, and it didn’t do the things a chapter end should do (specifically both wrap up and carry forward). And the whole […]
For the first time since I started posting The Write Life, I’m struggling with what to say. July has been a particularly difficult month. I’ve been grappling with feelings of isolation and loneliness, a decrease in creativity, and generally the suffocation of being hemmed in (which would have nothing to do with quarantine, am I […]
In June I took a break from my Writers Five goals so I could concentrate on getting organized. I recently started using Trello to organize and track freelance editorial projects. And, after having success with that, I decided Trello might be just what I need to organize my writing life. I’ve had a bad habit […]
One of the worst parts of quarantine for me is giving up going to conventions. I love conventions. I love being around people excited about stuff, geeking out with professional geeks, and seeing people display their obsessions in all manner of creative ways. But the convention community is creative, perseverant, and bold as all hell, […]
The second month in quarantine slowly felt more and more normal as new routines settled into habits and new habits became familiar. Some changes, actually, are welcome and have provided more structure to my day and made me more productive. Whereas March saw my motivation and productivity slowly folding like a flan in a cupboard, […]
Well, this month certainly has been a year, hasn’t it? First, I hope wherever you are, you’re safe, have everything you need, and are scared enough to take every precaution but not so scared that you’re immobilized. Mostly, I hope you’re taking care of yourself in whatever fashion that needs to be. (Which could be […]
This past month I hit a landmark in my daily writing goal: 1,500 days of writing! I talked about how I started writing daily when I hit 1,000 days back in 2018, so if you want the origins of this obsessive goal, check out the post, 1,000. While I’d like for this announcement to be […]
I’m great at meeting metric-based goals, but in meeting those goals I sometimes lose sight of the goals driving those metrics. I can write a specific number of words, but those words don’t always resolve into completed works. I know creatives who struggle with figuring out how to break big goals (like “write a novel”) […]
I started this month as many other writers did: considering my goals for the year. The past few years I’ve been in flux as I establish my editorial business, build my Patreon campaign, and write, write, (revise), write with the goal of traditional publishing. Many of the goals I set at the start of previous […]
I hesitate to say that in December I took a break. (I mean, my to-do lists are intense, and a lot of community planning happens in December, so it is by no means a light month.) But, no, yeah, I took a break. In November, I wrote more of my nonfiction project than I had […]