A retirement dream job, a yearning to write; a bookstore and a well-known Canadian author, all entered my life with magical serendipity. I was sixty-seven, with forty-three pages of a memoir awaiting page forty-four. I Wanted to Hold Onto the Stories I began a memoir seven months after my husband,Continue Reading
Ready for some health tips? If you want to live longer so you can pen more masterpieces, you have to take care of your health. I hear you groaning. An hour a day of exercise. Drinking kale smoothies. Snacking on rice cakes. No. You don’t have to make those sortsContinue Reading
by Noelle Sterne Three shelves in my library are crammed with guaranteed-to-break-your-writer’s-block books. All have a thick dust blanket, some have grown moss, and a few have put down roots. One book, though, never even got to the shelf. Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way went with me everywhere and, toContinue Reading
For me, the biggest emotional challenges of being a writer have been self-doubt and frustration. It’s been a long journey – 20 years, to be precise – from when I first began writing The Wayward Spy to its publication. The years were marked with near successes, gutting disappointments, and uncertaintyContinue Reading
by Ruth Bullivant What does a good book coach do for an author? I hope there aren’t any bad book coaches! There aren’t many of us around yet and if you find one trained by Author Accelerator, they are going to be good. Book Coaches Work with Writers While TheyContinue Reading
April is National Poetry Month. According to the Academy of American Poets (AAP), which launched the celebration back in 1996, this year (2021) marks the 25th anniversary of the day established to remind us all of the role poets have to play in our culture. You may be one ofContinue Reading
Any writing problems that you’re experiencing right now could be caused by writer’s anxiety. Don’t think so? Before you dismiss it out of hand, answer the questions below. What is Writer’s Anxiety? Writer’s anxiety is described as having feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical symptoms like increased blood pressureContinue Reading
The number one complaint from writers? “I don’t have enough time to write.” Writers dream of having uninterrupted months to attend solely to writing. If you’ve ever managed to grant yourself an extended weekend or even a week or two to write, however, you may have noticed—it doesn’t make itContinue Reading
Here’s what we writers tend to do: We work super hard for long periods. We strive, push, try new things, spend our nights and weekends learning and writing and editing and publishing, take classes, go to conferences, write and write some more, blog, present, do public readings, and on andContinue Reading
Do you need to change your work situation? Almost every day, I read something about a writer struggling to find time to write because of a difficult day job. Writers want to write, but after a full day at a demanding job, they face all sorts of barriers, from mentalContinue Reading
Writers are under enough pressure without adding to it. But add to it we do. This book has to be perfect. I have to reach my daily word quota no matter what. I need to write faster and produce more books per year. This book needs to sell well orContinue Reading
~Writing Well Wednesday Tip~ Have you taken a vacation yet this year? If not, are you planning one soon? A recent survey by Project: Time Off found that even though Americans took an average 17.2 days of vacation in 2017—the highest level in seven years—about a quarter of employees hadContinue Reading