When you’re trying something new, when you’re learning a new skill, when you’re pushing for a goal that you’ve never chased before – it’s not supposed to be easy all the time. It’s difficult to reach new heights if you never push yourself beyond what you’ve already proven yourself capable of. If you’ve started a…
Category: Craft
Hunt Your Fear
I had a breakthrough on a run yesterday. I went into the workout terrified that I wouldn’t be able to complete it; that all the times I’d completed it before had just been a fluke; and that I was too weak/tired/etc. to be able to do it that day. But through the chaos, I girded…
Patience as a Writing Tool
When I was twelve years old, I wrote a novel about an estranged couple forced back together when a killer hunts their daughter. After the first draft was done, I realized that I knew nothing about being a parent or a spouse, so I put the book aside to edit later when I was grown….
Get Better at the Small Stuff
If you’ve never written a novel before, it can feel incredibly daunting. If you have written a novel before, it can feel incredibly daunting. It’s a big undertaking, requiring months or maybe years of commitment. It’s time-consuming. It’s energy consuming. It can become one of the most rewarding things you’ve ever done, but that doesn’t…
Actively Prevent Burnout
I ran a marathon on Saturday. The training took twenty weeks. The race took less than four hours. And now I’m giving myself seven days to rest. That means no running, no workouts, no structured training of any kind. And as much as I love running — I miss it already — and hate being…
How to Ask for Help
There came a time in my life when I became embarrassed to ask for help. I felt like I should be able to do everything for myself, since I was all grown up and supposedly self-sufficient. Well, today I watched my younger brother come into the backyard with a jug of juice to ask one…
Some Words of Encouragement
I have a lot to do today. My brain is tired. My body is tired. My bed is calling my name. It’s hard to feel excited, motivated, or inspired at the end (or even beginning) of a busy day with a lot of scary tasks on the docket. With that in mind, I thought I’d…
Three Things I’ve Learned from Writing This Book
I am in the final stretch of the first draft of my zombie apocalypse novel. I started writing this one because I wanted something lighthearted and humorous – think of it as a zombie rom-com, in the vein of Warm Bodies – and because I wanted to have a change of scene before I started…
To Outline or Wing It
When I was a young whippersnapper, all of sixteen years of age, trying my hand at National Novel Writing Month for the first time, there was lots of discussion going on about “pantsing” versus plotting. Was I a fly by the seat of my pants type of writer? Or would I be organized and lay…
Advice for Writers: Rest with Purpose
How do you program rest into your schedule, and how do you like to make the most of it?