How to Do Your Writing

I guarantee, you're doing one thing wrong

Mindset, motivation and inspiration for novelists—with a dash of instruction about writing craft added in. There’s no one approach to writing that works for everyone, but I can help you find what works for you. Subscribe (free or paid) to get the fuel you need for your writing career.

One of my things is pugs. Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

My mind has turned into a pretzel trying to think of ways to reward paid subscribers. Nothing has felt quite right yet, but I want to do something. So for now, I’m experimenting with adding a weekly mid-week post for you. It will focus more on craft and process than my wafty love letters, which aim to encourage you to the page. Let me know what you think—and if you have suggestions for a topic on any aspect of writing, or questions you’d like me to answer, leave a comment or hit reply to this email.

I had a zoom with an old friend this week. She was my first coach. A “life coach,” a term which people often use pejoratively these days. But Tess helped me as I wrote my first published novel and started my book coaching career. Not only that, she’s responsible for my daughter’s happy marriage and indirectly, the reason I have grandchildren. But that’s a story for another day. Anyway, Tess and I talked about how, honestly, much of coaching is telling people to just do it.

That sounds so simple and easy and relaxed. But it isn’t. Because just doing it is hard. We resist doing it. We resist doing our thing, even if our thing—say, writing—is the most important thing in the world to us.

Last Sunday I wrote a love letter about my friend Sharon, who died recently. I wrote about how Sharon went out in the world and did her thing, despite the increasingly severe limitations of Parkinson’s. Many people wrote me or commented that Sharon’s story inspired them to want to go out and do more of their thing. So I thought a little support for that might be in order.

Next week I’m going to offer you a whole laundry list of suggestions that help me do my writing thing and that I hope will help you. But today I’m going to focus on one thing that I see writers and creatives doing wrong all the time. It’s something that makes me want to shout “Stop it!” at the top of my lungs. (More on that later, scroll down to the end.) And it’s a simple shift. Okay, maybe not simple. But doable.