I recently was perusing Susie’s website. One by one I flipped through each of her novels, thinking how good this one was or how I’d need to grab that one on Amazon. Then it hit me. I could actually tell the entire writer’s journey using just her titles! So…
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There’s Always a Way
Yesterday I had a 10:00am appointment to record an upcoming radio program. There was just one problem. We’d had a snow storm come through three days before. The whole area was covered in snow and, even worse, slick sheet ice.
I could not get a vehicle out of my community so I did what any dedicated radio talk show guest would do. I decided to walk the two miles to the station.
Big mistake.
I found myself slipping and sliding through slick ice, slushing though snow and walking on top of shrubbery that had been buried when the snow plows came through earlier.
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Checkup From the Neck Up
I know it’s happened to you. You’re tired, overworked, overwhelmed and trying to just keep your head above water in the middle of your world falling apart. Then right in the middle of your perfect storm some well-meaning loved one says something like, “When life throws you lemons, just make lemonade.”
Seriously?
Congratulations for resisting the urge to hurl them through a plate glass window. Never mind the fact that you HATE the lemonade they suggested you make with the sour fruit you seem to be overrun with at the moment, and the fact that lemons make you break out in hives.
They really did mean well. They just didn’t know what to say and somehow felt obligated to say something. But that’s for another blog post. Here’s the meat I want to get to.
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Take a Deep Breath
You’re six days into the NaNoWriMo and MBTWriMo writing marathon. You started out great. Thousands of words flew from your fingertips and onto the computer screen. Your writer friends envied your massive word count.
But today, the cursor on the blank screen taunts you. The blink-blink-blink flashes your zero word count to the world. When you finally force words to come out, they resemble your “See spot run” sentences of your first grade reader.
Ahhh… to be a writer.
Okay. Sit back, take a deep breath and relax! It’s all good. Your creative juices come in waves just like the tides in the ocean. Sometimes they come crashing in with the force of a tsunami and words flood your work in progress. Other times you’ll walk a mile just to reach a trickle.
You can’t hammer out word count every hour of the day. It’s unnatural. Unhealthy. It wouldn’t be wise for you to any more than you should eat constantly for all those hours. Your body has to have time to process what you’ve consumed. So it is with your word count.
When words won’t come and the contest pressure is sucking the life out of you, these things will help you get back on the right track:
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