Writer Prompts: Never Go in Against a Sicilian
Looking for more writing prompts? This prompt comes from the Writing Prompts Tumblr. See what it inspires for you—and me!
Entries by Alli
The Write Life: Approaching Writing Prompts
Alli shares her strategies for interacting with prompts to unlock inspiration from any source.
The Write Life: I’m Back!
It is with great joy that I announce that after a very rough end to 2022, I’m back! There is still a bit of chaos in my home life as we wrap cancer & lung infection treatments for my mom (which will take at least through July), but life has settled enough that I can […]
The Write Life: Hello, Wrench
Sometimes life throws a wrench into everything. That happened to me at the beginning of August with several family emergencies and health problems colliding at the same time. We weathered a multi-day struggle of figuring out which able-bodied adult was taking care of who and trying our best to not simultaneously burnout. During the worst […]
The Write Life: The Juggling Act
While writing is never an easy undertaking, I’ve been struggling more this year. Focus has been difficult, as has maintaining priorities. “Eyes on the prize” is a mantra I’ve been repeating as I continue to become distracted by other responsibilities and projects and things that Sound Cool but have been stealing my attention and energy. […]
The Write Life: The Qualitative Side of Writing
This month has been a lot of Overworked, Stressed Out, and Too Much. All those things in combination make it very difficult to have a productive creative life. Most days this month I met my minimum writing practice by the skin of my teeth, but I met it and, even on the days when I […]
The Write Life: Writing in Community
I’ve recently been focused on mental health, and since I write all the time, how mental health relates to—and sometimes hinders—writing. While I’ve discussed many methods I use to maintain productivity and focus (and will be doing so again in a workshop on June 12), and ways to repackage and reevaluate my goals to keep […]
Reconnect with Your Writing Life (Workshop)
Whether pandemic, politics, or other difficulties have drained your energy and flattened your mental health, it can be difficult to create when you’re struggling with depression, anxiety, or another problem that messes with your executive function. I have absolutely been there. In 2012 I was diagnosed with situational depression, a decline I could graph in […]
The Write Life: Redefining a Failure
Sometimes there is no sugar-coating life, and our best-laid plans crumble into failure. That’s what happened to me this past April after signing up for a writing boot camp at SavvyAuthors called One Scene a Day. I started the month with the best intentions of shoving my way through a huge chunk of my novel, […]
The Write Life: Finding Focus
My writing life has been very scattered of late. While I still have writing time planned daily and I haven’t broken my streak (still at least 250 words a day every day, just like the last several years), what I’ve been working on has been haphazard. After I finished my last writing project in early […]