My alarm was set for five a.m. but I was wide awake before it went off. I hadn’t slept much because I was too “excited”—excitement being what I’ve decided to call anxiety—about my live interview on Canadian morning television. My publicist had booked me on what she called “the Today show of Canada” to talk …
Tammy Letherer, the 9th Annual CWA Book of the Year winner for Indie Nonfiction, discusses the struggle and trials that come with writing and publishing a memoir. Her belief is that to be a writer, one must just write and not wait for the right time or circumstances. Writing and journaling and having constant practice makes you a writer.
I don’t usually include photos in my weekly blogs, but this you just have to see to believe—at my house, we have been living in a sock crisis for months. How does this relate to your writing? The excuses you make about why you can’t find the time, or why your stories don’t actually matter, or how it’s fine to let your project limp along as a scrambled, disorganized mess, those have to stop.
Yesterday I went to an event and heard Marcus Lemonis speak. Marcus is the entrepreneur and investor who stars in the TV show The Profit.
Marcus never even took the stage in front of the 4,000 people gathered at the Sears Center, except during one short segment when he interacted with six women he’d called up. Instead, we heard his voice before we saw him.
So you want to write about your life, but let’s face it—you’re afraid to share personal stories that involve people you know. Your experiences are populated with your loved ones and this is what’s stopping you. You can’t share your story without including the good, the bad, and the ugly, and those can come in the form of friends and family.
How do you write the truth without alienating your entire social network?
Maintaining independence as a creative soul isn’t easy. There are often doubts to conquer, and a constant barrage of comparisons, distractions, and missteps can have the bravest hearts running for cover. The good news is that we’re never alone. We get to follow the light of writers, artists, and visionaries who have come before us.
Here, ten of them share ways to celebrate the creative process and keep it flowing freely:
As if Monday mornings aren’t challenging enough, this particular Monday required me to appear at the Cook County Courthouse at 9:00 am. It was another steamy day, already 87 degrees, and a crash on the Kennedy slowed traffic to a snail’s pace. The SpotHero parking I paid for in advance turned out to be on Lower Wacker Drive instead of Upper Wacker Drive, which caused me to drive a little like Steve McQueen in Bullitt.
I’m at the coffee shop, head down over my laptop, wearing a look of concentration that makes everyone around me think I’m being productive when, in fact, I’m berating myself for my absent-mindedness.
I left the house without my cell phone and had to drive back to get it. It was already an hour past when I meant to leave and I have no idea where that hour went. As I got back in the car for the second time in ten minutes, I looked in the rearview mirror and chided myself.
You sure are spacey.
It’s been a long-time dream of mine to have a team of people supporting my publishing career. Maybe it’s common to every writer who spends years down the rabbit hole churning out words that may never be read. The idea of having someone else believe in you enough to say “let’s share this with the world” has got to be the best feeling ever.
I’m about to find out.
In a recent blog, I asked if there was any topic you’d like me to write about. I thought it would be fun to have an “assignment.”
Dave sent me this: “I would like to hear about your biggest challenges for 2018, challenges you know that if you decided to embody and embrace, you would uplevel as a mom or writer, and allow you to give more of your gifts to the world.”
Hmmm. This is a tough request.
👉 Enjoy dedicated writing space just steps from Lake Michigan
👉 Benefit from one-on-one developmental editing sessions