Finding Clarity: The Value of Writing a Discovery Draft

My student, a high school senior stared at the paper in front of him, then up at me, then back down at his paper before dropping his head in his hands with all the drama of an annoyed seventeen year old, and mumbled, “What do I even do with this? I don’t know how to…

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Saying Goodbye to Creative Projects

It’s time to say goodbye to a project that I truly enjoyed doing…until I didn’t, my podcast Dear Creativity, Let’s Write. I haven’t published an episode in over a year, but I’ve held onto it because it was a lot of work! Can I just delete that? Also, what if I’m inspired again to do…

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How to Organize Research for Your Book

If you’re writing a book, at some point, you’ll need to research, whether it’s a tiny factoid to supplement a scene or story, or a deep dive into psychological studies to build your argument. Conducting research is part of the job description. The challenge comes in organizing the information so that we can find it…

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On Discovering and Embracing Slow Writing, Slow Creativity

A few years ago, my sister sent me a link to a blog on a couple’s “slow travel” adventures. I’d never heard of slow travel, and I found the concept fascinating, this whole idea of going to a place, staying there for an extended period of time, and really getting to know it. Traveling slowly,…

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How long should writing your book take?

We live in an Amazon Prime, Netflix, fast food, “I want it NOW” kinda world. Life moves fast, and when we decide we want something, we generally can get it fairly quickly. No more waiting for a movie to come out or the VHS to get returned to Blockbuster. We just stream it. We get…

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5 Ways to Start Your Writing Sessions Strong

Starting a writing session is often the hardest part, the part that takes the most energy, kinda like getting a plane off the ground takes the most fuel, but once it’s in the air, it soars. Just like many of us pour ourselves a warm cuppa joe or hot tea in the morning to get…

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Book Writing Strategies for Aspiring Authors that Actually Work

20 Writing Strategies Aspiring Authors can Use to Plan, Write, and Finish their First Books An interesting thing happens when I tell people that I’m a writer. Their eyes open wide in surprise, and they usually say one of two things, either, “Oh, that’s so cool. I could never do that,” OR “Oh my gosh,…

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You are Your Best Audience

Let’s talk about your audience and WHO you create for. I had a big aha about this a few weeks ago, and it’s an idea I’ve been exploring. It started when I began digging back into my old blog posts and thinking about WHY I’d started my very first original blog which I started in March…

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