Author and visionary Steven Pressfield recently addressed a question from a hardworking writer. (Read the entire post here.) In essence, the question was: “When do you know if you need to return to a project and polish or start anew?” The writer had put years into his first novel, seekingContinue Reading
Anything worthwhile presents obstacles—how will you overcome them?
If you want to make a change in your life, here’s something I’ve learned—you can’t wait for things to get to the point of being “just right.” You need to listen to your inner voice, then set a deadline. A real, solid day/month/year deadline. Something about taking that one actionContinue Reading
At the risk of sounding ignorant, I’m going to admit something here: I’ve never read Letters to a Young Poet by Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. I’ve heard of it, of course, but never read it. Maybe my teachers were negligent in school. Maybe for whatever reason it just hasn’tContinue Reading
What Tom Petty said was true—waiting is hard. And sometimes life can seem like one big long line. Waiting for Mr. or Mrs. Right. Waiting for your ship to come in, your dreams to come true, or your luck to turn around. If you’ve started down a new road, youContinue Reading
I really admire the writing of Bill Kenower, Editor-in-Chief of “Author” online magazine, a product of the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association. He posts a daily blog and I’m always amazed at his ability to write so profoundly on such a demanding schedule. In one of his recent blogs entitled “BornContinue Reading
Today was a good day. Why? Because after a couple days of being away, I spent two hours working on my novel. I had to travel over the weekend. The pace and requirements of my schedule made it near impossible to focus on writing, and during the few hours thatContinue Reading
Sometimes the inner voice makes itself heard very clearly. People that instinctively know from an early age what they are destined to do—like Mozart, for instance—have no trouble hearing what it has to say and following its direction. Most of us, though, spend so much time tending to the everydayContinue Reading
The inner voice has one arch enemy: money. At least for many, it seems to be so. We’d love to follow where the inner voice is prodding us to go, but there’s no way right now. No way we can get the time or money to do it. The problemContinue Reading
In a recent issue of The Writer (April 2011, Moira Allen), I came upon this quote: “Success will become impossible if you cannot bear failure.” Most of us don’t like to think about failure—especially when we’re talking about dreams and goals that mean a lot to us in life. WeContinue Reading
Science has proven that setting goals helps us achieve what we want to achieve, from weight loss to financial success to surgical recovery to academic honors. Why, then, do so many people find the process ineffective? I’ve always been a committed goal-setter. Every year I create a Word document thatContinue Reading