The ego is about image.
The soul is about authenticity.
The ego can’t take constructive criticism.
The soul seeks it out and welcomes it.
The ego confuses itself with the work.
The soul stands apart from the work.
The ego wants to be seen as the best.
The soul wants to keep getting better. click for more
5. “Don’t prepare. Just show up.” I know, I know, this kind of goes against #3, in which I encourage you to have an outline (and chunk it up). But if you’re like me, you can overthink the story in a way that creates anxiety (and anxiety, in turn, triggers the ‘freeze or flight’ response…
I had a story due (minimum 6,500 words) for an upcoming YA paranormal anthology called KISS ME DEADLY and for the longest time I could not get it written. Writing – or more specifically, not writing – the story hijacked my life, so not only was I not writing the story, I also wasn’t writing…
1 In his book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, authors Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler examine the network effects that shape all of us. So many of our norms and behaviors hinge on what the people around us are doing, thinking and feeling — including whom…
cross-posted to Storytellers Unplugged I’ve been practicing my starts. And I’m not talking about the opening paragraphs. I mean, the actual act of sitting down and starting. There’s a reason why people say that half the battle is showing up. People who want to write can be divided into two groups: those who actually do…
cross-posted from The Decadence One of the ideas I became interested in and want to explore in my novel-in-progress THE DECADENTS is, to paraphrase a character from one of my favorite novels of all time, WHAT I LOVED (Siri Husvedt): “mapping the space between us, where one person ends and another person begins.” This is…
Natasha Wescoat, of the awesome art blog Art Candy (that’s her work called Vanilla Skies on the left) remarks on the anxiety that prevents us from doing creative work. This is a fear, she says, “which you can avoid by simply becoming immersed in the act itself.” Easier said than done, except Natasha’s point is…
I’m taking part in a memoir/novel workshop that starts this Saturday, and I’m psyched. Although in general, I have mixed feelings about workshops. The right workshop can be a thing of wonders, but I never found the ‘right’ one: I found, instead, nooks of ‘right’ scattered both online and off. I would start a class…
I’m reading Kelly L Stone’s Time to Write and I like what she terms “the burning desire to write”. She took the term “burning desire” from motivational speaker and author Napoleon Hill: This desire — a persistent vision that inspires action to reach an end goal — becomes the driving force that motivates a person…
This is the revised version of an essay originally published at Storytellers Unplugged as the second half of a two part series about writing as the opposite sex. The first essay was by Richard Steinberg. 1 Storytelling is seduction, when you think about it. Seducers get inside your view of things and reshape it to…
