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What the heck has happened?Why am I having so much trouble writing? I asked myself these questions as I wrote in my journal this morning. In recent weeks I have noticed my writing has begun to feel stale and forced, lacking the joy I usually feel. Sarabelle has been conspicuously absent and I’ve been feeling boxed in, pressured. As the answers flowed from my heart into my fingers, I discovered the reason. I’ve been trying to force my writing and even more so my workshop content into conformance with the examples of others. Not the expectations of others, but my own expectations of what people want to read and how they want to learn, and those expectations have been based on how other successful people are doing things. I also admit there was a tad bit of competition in there, and fear of being left in the dust. These emotions spring from my Inner Critic do not foster creativity and growth! Before I write another word, I must emphasize that as Herm pointed out in a recent post , lea...

I recently spent a few days on retreat at a friend's house in southern California. Something about the mellow gold and ocher hills and spare landscape of the Golden State strikes me as magical, profoundly relaxing and invigorating. In the stillness of the coastal hills, without the distractions of daily life, I’m able to get in touch with the essentials of life more deeply than usual. One morning I walked up the steep hill above the house. I went alone, with no agenda and no planned destination, just wandering along a road lined with magnificent mansions scattered among simpler California classics dating back fifty years or more. I went early enough in the morning to avoid the full heat of the day and intense sun exposure, but late enough for the slight chill and haze to burn off. Warm sunlight activated all sorts of fragrances, and I began to “come to my senses.” Sights, sounds and smells took on unexpected intensity. I delighted in a sudden burst of fresh, moistly cool fragrance ...

One of the best workshops a writer can take is found between the covers of books, and if you have a library card and return your books on time, it doesn’t need to cost a penny. Of course I’m talking about reading, often, widely, and deeply. Reading the work of others fires your imagination, and exposes you to myriad voices and ways of expressing thoughts and opinions. Before I give you tips on how to turn your reading time into your own personal writer’s workshop, please heed this caution: Reading the polished prose of successful writers can put your Inner Critic on steroids . “I can never write that well,” it screams into your brain, hiding behind the first person pronoun as a disguise. “Why bother? My life is so dull, and my writing plain as dirt. I don’t know grammar and forget to run spellcheck. Nobody cares anyway. Why should I bother?” Here’s what you shout back to that Inner Critic , out loud if nobody’s listening or you’re holding a cellphone to your ear: “I’m a student. I’m le...

Something unique happened after I posted that last message, First, Do No Harm . I received two e-mail responses, both fascinating. Because they were so thought-provoking, I asked permission to share. They are quite different in focus, so I’ll start with the first and save the second for next time. Marlene Clark wrote: Interesting dilemma, that man with the lazy, no good son of a .... Aside from the obvious harm that statement does, this actually falls in the same category as writing "Mother was wonderful." I tell my students that generalities or grand pronouncements are vague, and we want to be perfectly clear when we write. It also is a lazy way of writing because they didn't think about what they actually meant. My mantra is, "prove it:" use examples that back up their statements. This doesn't solve the problem of this man having bad feelings about his son, but it allows the reader to determine for himself that the son was lazy. But if the aim was revenge...

Through the years I’ve consistently given this exhortation: Any life story you write is better than writing nothing. Today I’m adding a caveat from the Hypocratic Oath: “First, do no harm.”I’ve written numerous posts about how to decide whether to share your stories, but I had not connected those dots with the advice above. That connection was formed by a recent question from a person who was helping someone else write his lifestory. The result was disturbing. The client insisted on including a section that described one of of his sons as a lazy, no-good, son-of-a-gun — or something to that effect. Without going into the details of the matter, something became crystal clear to me: Anything you write is better than writing nothing, but ... no writing you share with others should intentionally cause harm or exacerbate harm that’s already occurred! I’ve discussed this point many times. But not until this situation came up did I realize that my core values have progressed to the point tha...

Photo by Paperback Writer Last week I was pulled into a discussion of Morning Pages with a couple of other writers. One had not found them helpful and wanted to know our thoughts on the matter. This evolved into a conversation about the relative merits of writing by hand or on the keyboard. This morning as I began writing in my hard-bound paper journal, I began feeling restless. It would be faster to write on the keyboard. I could use cut and paste and ... I began listing all the relative merits and demerits of each form and came up with the following list: Digital journals are Faster to write Searchable for nuggets of wisdom that flow forth Easily copied into other documents Less likely to be found lying around Password protectable for security Subject to file corruption Potentially inaccessible as technology advances Handwritten journals are Durable Satisfying to write in Potentially risky places to keep sensitive insights Possibly making use of hand-heart-brain connection in unique...

Have you ever wondered what it takes to write a memoir that will not only be accepted by an agent and publisher, but has a chance of making the best-seller list, with all that’s attached to that? Heather Summerhayes Carriou, the author of Sixtyfive Roses: A Sister’s Memoir , sheds light on that question in the guest blog she wrote for the Women’s Memoirs website. (Hey fellows, don’t let the name deter you. This post will be equally valuable to you.) In the post she explains that over the course of twenty years , she wrote several drafts of the story. She combined bits and pieces and into larger stories. She wrote at home, standing in line, on the bus, in the air, everywhere. For months at a time, she didn’t write at all. Heather had no thought of publishing the story until she was working on her final draft. Through all the preliminary drafts she wrote for herself, to heal her anger and broken heart, to understand and make sense of the life she shared with her sister Pam, who survi...