Reading time: About 2 minutes
I plan to spend most of my birthday reading, but if you’d like to help my blog, there’s one small thing you could do…
This Saturday is my birthday. I’m not going to tell you the number — let’s just say I’ve earned every one of them, mostly at a keyboard.
As a kid, I loathed having a summer birthday. Most of my friends were out of town, which meant they couldn’t come to my party. And seven-year-olds hate missing their friends. Now I mind the August birthday less, because most years it means I get a sunny day, which makes celebrating more fun.
As far as gifts are concerned, I don’t want anything. I have my work, which I love, and I have you, which still delights me a little every week.
But if you’re wondering what to do with the impulse a birthday sometimes stirs up, I do have one thing to ask. And it won’t cost you a cent.
Think back to the writer you were before any of my posts clicked with you.
For a lot of you, that writer was stuck. Maybe you wrote a sentence and immediately fixed it, then fixed it again, and never made it to the second sentence. Maybe you had a whole book in you and a blank page that wouldn’t let you start. Maybe you’d decided that the problem was you — other people had some discipline or talent you’d been skipped over for.
You weren’t right about that. You just hadn’t found the way through yet.
Here’s my birthday ask: somewhere in your life right now, there is a writer in exactly the spot you used to be. The friend who keeps saying “someday.” The person at a party who wants to write a novel but won’t talk about it anymore.
You know who they are. You’d probably thought of them by the second sentence of this post.
Forward this blog to that one person. And suggest that they subscribe to my newsletter. Here are three additional posts they may wish to check out:
- 7 ways to stop editing while you write
- Can’t write? Can’t draw? Here’s why you should doodle
- Holidays, writing and the neuroscience of willpower
That’s the whole gift. Don’t send it to your network, or your whole list. Pick just one writer who needs this today, the way you needed it once. Pass along the thing you wish someone had handed you back then.
That’s how almost everyone here found me, you know. Not through ads or algorithms. I started my newsletter 20 years ago with exactly 38 subscribers. Now my readers number in the many thousands.
Each writer hands my work to another because it helped them, and they want it to help someone they care about. Every name on this list is really a small act of kindness that someone did for someone else. I find that genuinely moving, and it’s the best birthday present I can think of.
So, that’s it. That’s the ask. Send this to one stuck writer, and you’ll have made my year.
Thank you for being here. It means more than I can fit in a blog post.
P.S. When your friend signs up, I’ll send them a free, super-short video on how to stop editing while they write — the habit that traps more writers than any other. It’s my gift to get the words flowing again. And if you CC or BCC me on the email you send them (use the subject line: “Check this out!”), I’ll send you a copy of the video, too, and enter you in a monthly draw for a free digital copy of one of my books.
Something I’m loving right now
The post you’ve just read also arrives in inboxes every Tuesday — and subscribers get something extra. Each week, I include a brief, subscriber-only bonus: a short paragraph featuring a practical tip about a tool, book, video, app or resource I’ve tested and loved. This bonus is never published on my website — only in the email. No fluff. No sales pitch. Just one smart recommendation to make your writing life easier. Subscribe to my newsletter to get next Tuesday’s bonus.
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My video podcast last week described how you can help a child enter a children’s writing contest. You can watch the video or read the transcript, and you can also subscribe to my YouTube channel.
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What’s the best lesson you’ve ever encountered on a birthday? We can all learn from each other, so please, share your thoughts with my readers and me in the comments section below. You don’t have to join Disqus to comment! Read my tutorial to learn how to post as a guest. (It’s easy!) And congratulations to Catherine Womack, the winner of a book prize, for a comment on my July 7/26 blog post about the difference between throat-clearing and courtesy. (Please send me your email address, Catherine.)
