You’ve been thinking about a project, trying out beginnings, thinking through images. In your mind, this book, short story, essay, or poem is evolving into something brilliant—something shimmering like stained glass, light streaming through the colors, gleaming, perfect, like the rose window in Notre Dame. Ann Patchett talks about this phenomenon, how that stunning … [Read more...]
#61: Why Writers Should Be Curious About People
Years ago I read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and found one of the most useful principles from the book was this: Become genuinely interested in other people. Carnegie would meet people at a gathering or party and get them talking about their hobbies and areas of expertise. By being genuinely interested in them—by being curious—he met … [Read more...]
#60: The Top 5 Ways Curiosity Can Ruin Your Writing
“Curiosity can ruin my writing? What? I thought Ann Kroeker lauded curiosity as a key component to the writing life! She claims it’s one way we can achieve our writing goals!” “Is she turning her back on curiosity? Has it killed the cat and now she’s urging us to return to predictable poetry and lifeless prose?” No worries, friends. Curiosity still fuels my … [Read more...]
#59: Your Writing Can Change the World
Have you ever attempted the “I Am From” exercise? I’ll give you some links in the Resources section below to templates and lists you can use to write your own. In her book Writing to Change the World, Mary Pipher recommends this “I Am From” exercise as a way to know yourself, to explore identity issues by reflecting on food, places, people in your upbringing. You start … [Read more...]
#58: How to Affirm Your Own Writing Life
Some days, you wake up and feel like you can finish a novel in a month—and it’s not even November, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)! Or you feel so on fire you could pitch and land an essay in The Paris Review and The New Yorker. Then there are the other days. On those days, you might have gotten a rejection from the magazine you queried. Or your writing … [Read more...]
#57: Go Ahead and Play to Your Strengths
If you want to expand your reach, gain new skills, stretch yourself and take your writing to the next level, you can dance at the edge of your comfort zone—that place where we have to push ourselves just a little bit to try something new that we’ve been talking about for years. Embrace the Edge of Your Comfort Zone At the edge of our comfort zone we have to take … [Read more...]
#56: To Learn How to Write, You Have to Write
Writers become writers because they read something that made them want to pick up a pen or open a laptop and do the same thing. They read some piece of literature that inspired. Did that happen to you? Maybe when you were young? Maybe last week? You opened a book and thought: This novel makes me want to tell a story, too, with characters as vibrant as these and … [Read more...]
#55: Writers Should Say Yes to New Experiences
It seems like writers are encouraged to do three things: Apply bottom to chair, write regularly, and read a lot. This is great advice, and I encourage writers to do all three. But there are a lot of other things a person can do to become a stronger, more interesting writer. One of those is to say yes to new experiences. I got this advice in a session at the first … [Read more...]
#54: It’s Good for a Writer to Ask Why
When’s the last time you asked yourself "Why?" Why am I pursuing writing? Why am I writing this particular project? Why am I working on this book proposal or replying to this email or spending time over here on Facebook when I should be finishing an article to meet a deadline—and why “should” I be finishing that article? Asking why about why we write helps us get to … [Read more...]
#53: Need Writing Ideas? Take Inventory of Your Life!
In the first creative writing course I took in college, I felt like my life was boring. I had nothing interesting to write about. The professor told us to pull from childhood memories, so I wrote a poem about feeding the cows on the farm where I grew up. When I read the poem aloud in class, I expected a little laughter, but instead I looked around and everybody was … [Read more...]
#52: Open Your Heart and Invite Your Reader In
The inspiration for the 50-Headline Challenge that I introduced back in Episode 50 came from an interview with Jon Morrow, who wrote 100 headlines a day for two years. One of the things Jon brought up in that original interview with Duct Tape Marketing is that he likes to focus on the emotion he wants to bring out in the reader. The interviewer asked about his practice … [Read more...]
#51: Make the Most of Your 50 Headlines
How’s the challenge going? If you’ve just discovered the podcast and haven’t listened to Episode 50, “Stop Waiting for Last-Minute Writing Inspiration,” you might want to go back and listen. At the end, I issued a 50-Headline Challenge in honor of the 50th episode: write 50 headlines in the week ahead. About a week has passed, and I’ve been hearing from people who took … [Read more...]
#50: Stop Waiting for Last-Minute Writing Inspiration
My life presents numerous complications making it hard to plan ahead or get ahead. One simple practice I’ve begun is to stop waiting around for last-minute writing inspiration and instead, generate ideas that can be waiting in the wings, for their chance to step onto the screen and become a blog post, podcast, article or even a book project. That way when some time opens … [Read more...]
#49: Here’s to the Writer Moms
This one’s for the moms out there who are also writers. Writer moms. My mom was a writer mom. I am a writer mom. You might be a writer mom, too. And I'm sure you know one. Please know this: Writer moms are trying to raise their family while advancing their writing in some way. And it’s hard. Madeleine L'Engle once wrote in one of her Crosswicks … [Read more...]
#48: Why Do We Writers Put So Much Pressure on Ourselves?
In this episode, you'll hear about the stories I wrote in high school, featuring popular singers like Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran. The reader got to insert her name as the love interest in fill-in-the-blank adventures like "The Medallion of Kilimanjaro." It was all just for fun, no grades involved. My friends seemed to truly enjoy them, so I wrote more. I wrote for … [Read more...]
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