Reading time: About 5 minutes (faster if you scan) How to deal with overwhelm is a question that plagues many writers, especially academics. Here I offer 17 tips to help make your writing life much calmer. I’m generally a calm person, but I can remember a time when I felt […]
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Reading time: About 1 minute This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world for material to help other writers. Today I discuss a blog post about procrastinating, framed as a story about moving pianos… Many writers I work with tell me they don’t
Are you procrastinating by trying to move pianos? Read More »
Viewing time: 3 mins 58 secs The Write Question is a weekly video podcast about writing that I started in 2017 and that ran, more or less weekly, until April 2022. This is a republication of issue #156, which addresses how to choose between great ideas for writing. The post
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Reading time: About 2 minutes Madelaine Caritas Longman estimates that estimate that for most people, writing is at least 80% rewriting… Madelaine Caritas Longman is the author of the poetry collection The Danger Model (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019), which received the Quebec Writers Federation Concordia University First Book Prize. Her
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Reading time: About 4 minutes Does a five-minute workday sound ludicrous to you? It shouldn’t. Not if you want to establish a sustainable writing habit… Have you spent days, weeks, months, perhaps even years failing to find enough time to write? Perhaps failing to find any time to write? I
The five-minute workday Read More »
Reading time: Less than 1 minute This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world to find websites, books and articles to help other writers. Today I discuss a blog post about grammar myths… When I was in high school, I learned how to
Grammar myths you can ignore Read More »
Viewing time: 4 mins. 47 secs. The Write Question is a weekly video podcast about writing that I started in 2017 and that ran, more or less weekly, until April 2022. This is a republication of issue #155, which addresses burnout and boredom in writing. The post first ran on
Dealing with burnout and boredom (video) Read More »
Reading time: Just over 2 minutes I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a series of similes from Claire Lombardo…. Claire Lombardo (pictured above), is a fiction writer, teacher, and 2017 graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her first
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Reading time: About 2 minutes Write Kit Daven keeps a mantra posted near her computer. It reads: By Any Means Necessary…. Kit Daven’s heart beats for the eerie and the extraordinary in her tales. Her sci fantasy series, A Xiinisi Trilogy (The Forgotten Gemstone, The Other Castle, and The Starry
Reflections on writing with Kit Daven… Read More »
Reading time: about 4 minutes To be a truly productive writer you need plenty of shut-eye. The absence of sleep will not only negatively affect your health, but it will also hurt your writing… Here’s how to get more sleep: I think a lot about sleep. A trip I once
13 ways to boost your writing by catching more ZZZZZs… Read More »
