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Back to Basics, Part 6 – The Lopside of Your Brain

This is Part 5 in a series of posts chronicling the journey of one writer from self-defeat and creative paralysis back to a love of writing and productivity, heavily inspired by Ray Bradbury’s excellent Zen in the Art of Writing. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 I […]

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Back to Basics, Part 5 – Hidden in the Nouns, Lost in the Lists

This is Part 5 in a series of posts chronicling the journey of one writer from self-defeat and creative paralysis back to a love of writing and productivity, heavily inspired by Ray Bradbury’s excellent Zen in the Art of Writing. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 “I finally figured out […]

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Back to Basics, Part 4 – Space Travel, Sideshows, and Gorillas

This is Part 4 in a series of posts chronicling the journey of one writer from self-defeat and creative paralysis back to a love of writing and productivity, heavily inspired by Ray Bradbury’s excellent Zen in the Art of Writing. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 “I went back to collecting Buck Rogers. […]

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Back to Basics, Part 3 – Looking to Your Zest, Seeing to Your Gusto

This is Part 3 in a series of posts chronicling the journey of one writer from self-defeat and creative paralysis back to a love of writing and productivity, heavily inspired by Ray Bradbury’s excellent Zen in the Art of Writing. Part 1 | Part 2 “If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, […]

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Back to Basics, Part 2 – Your Pinch of Arsenic

This is Part 2 in a series of posts chronicling the journey of one writer from self-defeat and creative paralysis back to a love of writing and productivity, heavily inspired by Ray Bradbury’s excellent Zen in the Art of Writing. You can read Part 1 here.  “I have learned, on my journeys, that if I […]

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Back to Basics, Part 1 – What Would Ray Do?

There comes a time in the life of a writer when the keyboard is made of lava and every keystroke burns. There may be a thousand reasons for this—it might be the rejection that broke the camel’s back, or an all-consuming project that sapped the author’s mojo longer than could be sustained. It might be […]

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What, Me Worry? Absolutely.

Last time I blogged about dealing with guilt in our creative endeavours, inspired by the words of best selling self help guru Wayne Dyer. His philosophy is that guilt is a useless emotion. He makes the same claim about worry. “It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there’s […]

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Guilt is a Useless Emotion

Write every day! Keep your butt in the chair! Reach your word count! Write, write, write! We’re writers and writers write, but occasionally something comes up that prevents us from writing. Even if there’s a good reason for it, we still can feel guilty for not following the writer’s creed. Wayne Dyer first introduced me […]

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What’s Your Work Count?

There’s a lot of attention paid these days to personal metrics. I’m talking about the practice of recording the numbers of our daily lives and measuring progress towards our goals by examining those numbers. Diet and exercise are probably the most common metrics people measure: maybe we’re counting calories towards a desired weight loss. We […]

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Templates for Drafting & Revision: a guest post by Laurel Amberdine

We’re so excited to welcome Laurel Amberdine to the blog today! I’ve had the wonderful fun of working with Laurel at Lightspeed and the special Women Destroy issues, and let me tell you: she’s awesome. Here’s some great advice to get you ready to kick some serious word count butt. • • •  Today, I […]

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