By Milli Thornton SOMETIMES WHEN I’M feeling overwhelmed by my workload, or when I’m feeling sleep deprived, I’ll have one of those horrible existential moments when my life—and my writing—feels meaningless. That’s always when my dinosaur brain comes up with some really supportive self-talk for my writing, such as, “What’s the point of working this…
Category Archives: creativity
The Artistry of FoW Regular, Lois Eighmy
This is the first post in a series about our FoW regulars. I hope this will be a fun way to help you get to know one another better. ~ Milli LOIS EIGHMY bought an author-signed copy of Fear of Writing and subscribed to the newsletter (Fear of Writing Gazette) back in 2005. But it…
j’s Journey: A little detour
Since our last play date… I revised my query letter one last time. Seriously. This is the last one. (Stop laughing.) After my last post, a talented, experienced author offered to read my letter. She gave me advice that made my inner tuning fork hum. I felt the rightness of it, updated my letter, and…
Meeting the Muse
By guest blogger Joan Lambert Bailey This piece first appeared on Joan’s blog, Popcorn Homestead, and is reprinted here with permission. Written while she was participating in the 2011 Blogathon. Today’s theme for the Blogathon (five places I like to write) is one I’m really struggling with as it touches on a rather sensitive topic…
Life and writing are messy – but you’ve gotta love the challenge!
By guest blogger Estrella Azul This guest post was one of the toughest to submit so far. Sure there have been poetry and mainly flash fiction submissions sent in to various e-zines and some rejection emails, but that was fiction. I was okay enough with the rejections. What you’ll read below, though, are some of…
10K Day: Science or Magic?
By Milli Thornton We get oodles of feedback about how much people love the 10K Days, but I’ve never stopped to examine in writing why it works. I could probably write a small book on this topic, but to contain this in a blog post let’s look at two sides of the gold coin: science…
Writing and Trust
By Milli Thornton Do you remember the first time you connected with the joys of writing? For me, it was age 13 and a story assignment from our English teacher. I was burrowed into a warm and glorious cocoon, inhabiting a special, exciting world only I had the power to create. After I emerged, I…
Fear of Rejection
By guest blogger Patrick Ross Six weeks. Thirty-five states. Forty-three interviews. Six thousand, eight hundred miles. Four time zones. One speeding ticket. Those are some key statistics from my summer 2010 road trip across the United States. I headed out in a rented hybrid to capture on video creative individuals. My interview subjects included writers,…
What I learned in 15 minutes a day…
By Judy Clement Wall On January 31st, I posted my intent to write wild for 15 minutes a day every day in February. So here’s the good news. I wrote a lot of stuff – a draft of a short story, notes for a personal essay I decided I’m not ready to write, a monologue,…
15 Minutes a Day
By Judy Clement Wall I’m conducting an experiment. During the month of February, for 15 minutes every day, I will write whatever comes out. Stream of consciousness. No editing, no stopping to read, no target market, no specific project in mind. Just writing… spilling the contents of my head onto the page (or screen as…
