Creativity & Writing Life

All writers have to find a way to deal with the internal negative voice that tells them their work is crap and not worth pursuing.

Ideally, we’d have all the creativity and energy and desire we need to write amazing stories. However, the truth is, sometimes we hit roadblocks while following through. Here are some of the most common roadblocks and how you might solve them.

In a great story, character and plot are inextricable from one another. The seeds of the story conflict lie in the character.

Here's a word I have eliminated as fully as possible from my information and advice lexicon for writers: passion.

If there's something at the heart of the story that still interests you, that keeps pulling you back, that still haunts you years later, then that's probably a sign that there's something worth struggling for there.

Every writer’s pet fear stems from the mother of all fears: What other people think of what I write is more important than what I think of what I write.

Writer Katherine Vaz discusses an assignment that is given to every student at her university: to write about "the most important thing ever to happen to me."

We order; we catalogue. It is, simply, what the human mind excels at.

If fiction writing is something you’d like to pursue in your retirement years, follow these steps to help you prepare for the business of authorship.

Taste is not static. Rather than a fixed endpoint toward which one toils away, it's a target that moves over the course of a lifetime.

Sometimes that first draft is never going to become a final draft. That doesn't mean it's a waste, though.

Any accomplished writer is also a reader—and usually a reader first. For the writer who is the least a bit

Sometimes endings are designed to satisfy, answering the questions posed along the way. Endings that allow you to leave as easily as you came in. But what if the ending isn't designed to satisfy?

Productivity is certainly one goal of a retreat. But there are other desired outcomes, such as returning home rested, relaxed, and energized by the time away.

Learn about four tensions you may experience that have the potential to undermine your creative work and leave you feeling stuck.

Why must writers schedule time for residencies and retreats? Because in doing so, we honor an annual appointment with writer self-care.

It's sometimes easier to cut a piece of writing if you can't see how to fix it. Just remove the offending bits, job done. But it can deaden a piece.

There are many analogies drawn between writing and sports: exercising your creative muscles, learning to go the distance, pushing up against your limits.

Before you buy another pen-and-pencil set for that writer in your life, consider some gift options that take their digital lives into consideration.

The most successful people in every industry use goals as road maps to help them reach their desired destination. It’s no different for writers.

Author Kurt Rheinheimer discusses how the most precious vein for material is from just before he knew who he was and what was going on.

There are countless ways to defeat ourselves, but the biggest and worst is to make the task too big and then feel daunted before we ever start

Watch my 30-minute talk on how to bring together the art and business sides of your career in a way that doesn't feel like a bad marriage.

Author Melissa Yancy shines a new light on what failure brings to the writing life—and it isn't the usual reflection on rejection.

When writers talk about where their ideas come from, the answers are as varied as wildflowers