Practice means what it says: writing is something to be done over and over, something that improves through the repetitive doing but that needs not be done perfectly. ~Julia Cameron
It’s that time again, it’s the end of the year roundup! (Oh, my bad, this is the very first ever end of the year roundup from Positive Writer. Enjoy!)
Anyone can write. You can easily put pen to paper or your fingers to the keyboard and create words. However, not everyone creates art. Do you?
When it happens, you feel like the flesh has been ripped from your body, leaving your heart exposed, helpless and raw. Shame courses through your veins. You question your talents as a writer. You wonder if you should start over, or quit altogether. The only detail you’re quite sure of is how wounded you feel.
The nightmare experience I’m describing is…
I need YOUR help!
Last year I started the year off right by listing the 25 Top Writing Blogs, and I’m going to do it again in 2015. This time I’d like your help with choosing the best blogs. I’m also going to expand the list to the Top 50.
How can you help? I’m glad you asked….
Too many of us stop before we get started. So we tend to believe it’s the starting that is the hardest part of, well, getting started. But it’s not. Not by a long shot.
Let’s admit it: We’re all a little bit scared of the writing and publishing process. Especially if we’ve never done it before. We feel it as we stare at the blank page, or as we hit the send button on that first e-mail to an agent or publisher, or as we wait for the first review to pop up on Amazon.
It’s okay to admit that. Because we all feel it. And we’re not alone.
Whether you are a professional, doing it alongside a day job, or it’s simply a hobby, you write because you feel a compulsion. It’s a passion, a calling, a process that brings you to life and helps you make sense of the world.
But simply loving something doesn’t make it easy to do…
Writers get well-meaning advice all the time. Whether you’re a poet, a novelist, a business writer, or the editor of the New York Times, there will always be people telling you how to do what you do, but this way. Their way.
Should you always listen? Good question…
I have days when I find it entirely too difficult to get in to my writing groove. On those days I’m uninspired, unmotivated and well, bleh! Maybe you have days like that, too?
The challenge is to put our butts in our chairs and write anyway – good, bad or ugly, come rain or shine. It’s easier said than done. Right?
Well, let’s work on that…
In an age when music stars are seeking our attention with the way they (barely) dress and with shocking antics, there comes along a refreshing singer- songwriter who refuses to conform to sensationalism.
So what is the secret to Taylor Swift’s success? What makes her different?