5 Ways to Overcome Impostor Syndrome
“I have written 11 books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’ ” —Maya Angelou This week I've written...
How to Thrive While Receiving Feedback On Your Script
This week I've written a piece for the Final Draft blog about thriving while receiving feedback, which can often be emotionally perilous. I hope you find it helpful. “You are not your idea, and if...
7 Creative Strategies to Survive Distance Learning and Keep Writing This Fall
Last week I wrote a piece for the Final Draft blog about 7 creative strategies to survive distance learning AND keep writing this fall. Like many parents, school is majorly on my mind right now, so...
7 Mindset Perspectives to Motivate Your Writing
This week I wrote a piece for the Final Draft blog about mindset perspectives to help us all stay motivated to write, even with everything that's going on in the world (and at home!). I've been...
Living and Writing In Uncertain Times
We're living through an unprecedented event in our modern era. Life has changed, radically, in what felt like over night. The word "unprecedented" feels wholly inadequate, honestly. Surreal? Unholy?...
On Finishing (and Perfectionism!): A Review of Jon Acuff’s Finish
I've just finished reading Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done* by Jon Acuff. It's a delightfully irreverent book packed with useful insights -- sometimes counterintuitive -- about how and why we...
Is It Time for a Big Burst of Progress on Your Book?
There are many stages of writing. There are the practical stages -- inspiration, idea, concept, development, outlining, drafting, revising, editing, polishing, and proofing. There are the emotional...
Getting Out of Writing Overwhelm and Into Action
Let's talk about writing. And overwhelm. First, a story. When I was a kid, my parents used to take us on high Sierra backpacking trips. They were hard. We're talking about high-altitude, have to...
11 Tips for Revising Your NaNoWriMo Draft
It's mid-January. If you "won" NaNoWriMo, you'll have 50,000 words of raw material for a new novel. If you didn't make it to the 50k mark, you'll still have pages to work with. But now what? Where...
Author Insights: On Publishing Personal Essays with Janis Brams
It's time for another installment of our "Author Insights" series. In this series, I'm introducing you to writers who've taken their writing all the way to the finish line of publication, and they...
Sci-Fi Circuit: ‘Stasis’ and the Low-Budget Sci-Fi Market
Author Insights: Barbara Jacksha on Journeying With Our Writing
It's time for another installment of our "Author Insights" series. In this series, I'm introducing you to writers who've taken their writing all the way to the finish line of publication, and they...