It’s January, that time of year when many of us put on our Janus faces: we look back at the past year to review our progress and forward to the coming year to see what’s next. This year my friend Brian suggested that, in honor of stepping into the 2020s, instead of looking at individual […]
Mindset
Fly Me to the Moon: Reigniting Inspiration
A few months ago my husband and I watched the National Geographic series Mars. It’s an odd mash-up of sci-fi and documentary: the story of a future crew that explores and settles Mars is punctuated with present-day experts and enthusiasts discussing space exploration. At the end of the series, one person laments that we are about […]
In Praise of Deadlines: To Get Your Book Done, Raise the Stakes
For the past month, my husband and I have been preparing for the Tour D’Coop, an annual tour of backyard chicken coops in Raleigh that’s a fundraiser for a local nonprofit. We’ve taken the tour in the past but had always hesitated to offer up our coop. “We don’t have anything special to show people.” […]
Are distractions keeping you from writing your book? Try these remedies
This is the year: You are writing a book. Excellent. Congratulations! But you’re already feeling under the gun because it’s the end of January and you haven’t started yet. Or maybe you started writing diligently the first couple weeks of January, then petered out as life swung back into post-holiday gear. Aargh! So frustrating. You’re […]
Write with Ease: Keep Your Creative Well Filled
I attended an event last week to honor Jaki Shelton Green, North Carolina’s Poet Laureate. As she spoke—as I drank in her words—I felt a tremendous sense of relief. The words themselves? I couldn’t tell you. But the feeling of craft and inspiration and new ideas…ah. I hadn’t realized I felt like a parched plant […]