A New Year: time for new writing goals and charting a path to success

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

It’s a new year and a perfect time to think about writing goals for 2023. There are four approaches to setting new years’ goals:

1.  Set multiple goals but break them within minutes, hours or days because we never had any true intention. This is more a “wish” list of wants / desires rather than a true goal setting.

2 . Set one or two goals and managed to keep it until around Ground Hog’s day and then give up because honestly, keeping to your goals is hard work.  

3.  Refuse to set goals at New Years because either we know there’s no point (because we won’t keep to them), feel it is too cliche or we are completely content with our present life so we need no goals.

4.  Set actual achievable goals and keep to it, even if the the goal is not ultimately achieved, the steps and habits get developed over the year.   

How do we get to number 4?

Read more

Call Me the GRINCH

Tis the season of stress. The season of hunting for that perfect precious gift while you get your elbows up to wrestle for that last sale item on your list. Not only do you need to tackle your regular laundry, dusting, vacuuming, dog walking, work and dishes… but now you need to clean your house before you can hang up those pesky decorations and Christmas lights (fit in the marital spat over the lights, apologize and then make up for your poor behaviour), drag out and dust off the ol’ Christmas tree, and then somehow remember to move the freakin’ Christmas Elf every night before bed. Read more

It’s All About Temperature

Photo credit with thanks to Sarah McCraw Crow. @sarahmcrow

Blink and their gone.

What am I referring to?

Fall leaves.

It seems that one day I’m trying to remind myself to appreciate the stunning red and yellow canopies and then suddenly, the trees are bare, and snow begins to fall.

Photo credit to Donna Curtin.

But I’m determined this year to slow the clock, to breathe in the leaves fermenting on the ground. Is that what makes that smell? Rotting leaves? Mold? Mushrooms? Some magical combination of rain, cold nights, and the sap draining from the trees and into the ground to hide away until maple syrup season? Read more

Do you have enough space for creative thought?

From Pixabay, StockSnap

I caught three minutes of a radio documentary exploring the concept that to foster creativity, a person needs both time space and physical space. The time space seems obvious – the freedom to allow a mind to wander and explore— would help any creative spirit. Who doesn’t need more time to allow themself to write, paint or basketweave with pine needles?

But in the few minutes I heard of the documentary, it also discussed the idea that a person would be more creative working in an open air or high vaulted room. Is this true?

Time for research!

Read more

A Year in the Life of a Writer

It’s been over a year since I’ve done a blog post. I was taking a break to focus on my ONE writing priority: FINISHING MY NOVEL. It’s been a long project since I was learning how to write while I raised a family, worked, and tried to keep up with our house. My struggle is every artist’s struggle: How to keep creating when life is overwhelming you. (Unless of course you have a fabulous patron and you’re living in some historic castle writing away while dragons play outside.) But for the rest of us, here’s my story on how I kept to my goals when life was super challenging. And the tips, techniques and resources I used to keep myself on track even when life was busy making other plans for me.

Read more

Finding Your Family – Comparable Titles

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

The dreaded ‘comp’ or comparative title is every querying novelist’s nemesis. You spend years writing and perfecting your novel—a book only you could have written, a story unlike any other—and then you’re asked to list the similar books.

What? Are they crazy? Of course, there is nothing exactly like your novel—that’s why you wrote it.

The trouble is—this is the business of books. If you want an agent to promote your work, if you dream of the day a publisher will commit to printing your pages and you can’t wait to see your glossy hard cover baby mingling on the shelves of your favourite bookstore, then you need to help everyone to position your book. Read more

Letting Go

 

“The most exquisite paradox: as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can’t have it. The minute you don’t want power, you’ll have more than you ever dreamed possible.” ~Ram Dass


As writers, sometimes we want so badly to be published, that we will do just about anything to make that success happen. What ultimately happens is that we get stuck on a gerbil that’s spinning so fast, we can’t get off.

Read more