The Home Stretch: Finishing Well

I will let you all in on a little secret. I'm not a runner. The closest I've ever come to running a marathon was a 5k turkey trot one of my more fitness-keen friends convinced me to run with her during my freshman year of college. She said it would be fun, we'd take it …

Unexpected Adventures of the Writing Life

Recently, I've been rereading The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien and it has gotten me thinking a lot about adventures, why characters go on them, and how they get started. In the case of The Hobbit's Bilbo Baggins, his story begins when a wizard arrives on his doorstep, bringing thirteen dwarves with him, and informs Bilbo …

Silencing Your Inner Jerk: Writing and Perfectionism

Many, many people before me have written about how to deal with the "inner critic" but, personally, I've never liked that term very much. To call the voice that tells me day in and day out that I have not written enough (and that what I have written belongs deeply buried in the world's smelliest …

Set Yourself Up for 100 Successful Days

We're almost two weeks into the challenge of writing every day for one hundred days and whether you've been feeling like the Little Engine That Could Write The Great American Novel in A Hundred Days or more like a stalled car someone abandoned on the side of the freeway, this is a great time to …