Delighted to welcome Angela Ackerman of Writers Helping Writers & One Stop For Writers, writing coach, speaker, & co-author of many bestselling resources, including one of my all-time favourite fiction writing book series, which if you’ve been in your writer’s garret for the last few years, are so invaluable, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without. Here Angela offers her potent & equally invaluable writing tips on vulnerability […]
George Saunders’ Short Animated Documentary on the Art of Storytelling
“A good story is one that says, at many different levels, ‘we’re both human beings, we’re in this crazy situation called life, that we don’t really understand. Can we put our heads together and confer about it a little bit at a very high, non-bullshitty level?’ Then, all kinds of magic can happen.” ~ George Saunders […]
15 Ways to Fall in Love with Writing [All Over Again]
If your love for writing, much like our ebbing summer’s sky, has lost its glow, its colour, & warmth—try these tips to ensure you fall in love with writing again, no matter the weather outside. Just as we feel displaced as writers if we’re not writing, if we’re not regularly engaging with the act itself, if a specific story or […]
8 Tools to Overcome Resistance, Uncertainty and Let Your Writing Flow
When working on your creative projects much like climbing [or cycling] up a mountain, there are times when it feels like you are heading blindly into the mist, unsure of optimum direction and progress. Perhaps you find yourself fluctuating between confidence and uncertainty, or filled with a momentary unease or anxiety about where you and your creative offerings […]
Creative Yin and Yang: Making Time for Writing While Riding the Waves of Creativity
Some days nothing we write seems good enough, other days, it’s as if the nine muses themselves have descended onto the page. After one of those magical writing days, we long for them all to be like that, to all be graced with exquisite inspiration and flow but every moment we dedicate to writing, no […]
Sarah Waters on being disciplined
“Treat writing as a job. Be disciplined. Lots of writers get a bit OCD-ish about this. Graham Greene famously wrote 500 words a day. Jean Plaidy managed 5,000 before lunch, then spent the afternoon answering fan mail. My minimum is 1,000 words a day – which is sometimes easy to achieve, and is sometimes, frankly, like […]