I had a conversation with a friend recently about writing and blogging (my friend’s main outlet for writing is her blog and newsletter). She’d written a fresh post, tried something new, and was hesitating before publishing it.

She’d written something really raw and real, she said, and wondered if she should send it [...]

Here’s one way to deal with writing anxiety: know that the story you’re writing is already happening.

What if your characters are already living their story, and you don’t have to make them up? What if it wasn’t your job to come up with personalities and invent settings and conflicts and relationships?

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When you sit down to write, how much time do you give yourself to practice? I mean the off-record stuff: writing exercises and warm ups.

Now think of the way dancers or musicians interact with their art. The performance, the finished piece, is the culmination of hours of practice: boring warm ups, weird experiments, [...]