I coach writers who are stuck. Yesterday, the writer I coached was…me. As you may remember from my post about it back in December, I’m writing my first book. It’s a short, friendly guide for nonfiction authors on what editors do, how to find a good one, and how to get the most out of […]

Oh, small sweet stacktidy, clearwritten with yesterday’sdinner dishes done,today you greet me, give meno decisions to be made,no questions to be asked,no invitation elsewherejust the reliefof already knowingexactly what is to be doneand doing it.

Pre-pandemic, my partner and I loved to host. He’s an academic; most of our friends at the time were, too. Every semester I’d watch their gripe-o-meters and stress-o-meters nudge higher and higher until, by grading time, my friends were little more than exhausted, groaning husks of themselves. So we applied our love of hosting to […]

Begin this winter, get tools and strategies that last for the long haul of your writing life. You’re a nonfiction writer in the middle of a project, but you’re stuck. Uninspired. Overwhelmed. It nibbles away at you, deeper and deeper, a toxic combo of professional pressure and personal disappointment and self doubt and feeling disconnected […]

You came. You wrote. You…stalled out. There was too much going on. You fell out of love with your idea and now can’t bring yourself to work on it. The project is too big—it’s overwhelming. You have no idea what to tackle next, or what direction to take it in. The end of the semester […]

I had a great time today talking to amazing book coach Vicky Quinn Fraser about Feel Good Where You Write coaching, how bringing beauty into your workspace boosts your focus, addressing our shrimp-posture at our desks, and her amazing Microbook Magic course. Take a peep!

Are you a perfectionist when it comes to your writing? Maybe you don’t move to the next paragraph until this one is just right, meaning you barely get words on the page every day. Maybe you endlessly revisit the wording of a particular idea until you aren’t sure what’s good anymore. Maybe you don’t write […]

You finished the first full draft of your manuscript and now you…just…can’t imagine ever getting out of this chair. “It’s like deflating—like an old party balloon that’s gone kinda floopy,” says writer and book coach Vicky Quinn Fraser.  You worked so hard for so long to get your book done and now it’s out in the world and you’re…kind of […]

How do you feel about your writing—and how does writing make you feel—when it’s going well? For me, it feels like a delicious gathering of power, an accumulation of kinetic energy. A little like this, or this: Conversely, why and when does your writing stutter out? What does it feel like? What have you done […]

You have only twenty minutes of writing time today but spend the first five remembering what you did yesterday. You’re overwhelmed and paralyzed when your hands hit the keyboard. You lose the thread of ideas from day to day, feeling momentum leaching out of the process like air out of a tire.  You poke around […]