I recognize as much as the next guy that you need to make money to survive this world. But should you suffer for it? Does it need to come between you and your writing?  (# Of words I wrote for my manuscript today: 408)

My whole life everyone has told me I can write on the side of whatever it is I do to make real money. They’ve said I’ll hate writing if it ever turns into a job. That I belong in science. Or medicine. Or whatever dead-end desk job I can get so long as I’m bringing...

Short of duct-taping yourself to your chair and asking someone to change the wifi password on you, how do you face the dreaded blinking cursor? Of course, to some people, this is a silly question. “What do you mean, force myself to write? I can hardly stop...

You know the joke about how you eat an elephant? One bite at a time? That’s how I’ve heard people talk about finishing a novel.  So, I set a goal to write at least 300 words a day. Because it’s achievable even if it’s midnight and I still haven’t started yet. In...

When I was heading into my junior year in college, fresh off a two-month-long vacation study abroad trip to Spain, I found out I’d lost my 4.0 GPA. Worst of all, it felt more like a technicality because, in Spain, the grades I received would have been counted as...

I binged the entire second season of Never Have I Ever today.  That’s not an excuse for not getting to my writing sooner—because the episodes are only a half-hour—but I’m still stuck in the habit of writing only at the last minute before I go to bed. And I...

In this moment, I feel like nothing I’m doing matters. Like this blog is silly and unimportant and will never be read by anyone (never mind my fiction). Like I’ll be stuck forever in my job, my pain, my inability to write more than 300 words at a time.  I feel...

I have no clever excuses today. There were plenty of times I could have simply switched windows on my computer and started typing. But I didn’t.  Even leaving Scrivener open overnight so I couldn’t not see it when I fired up my computer this morning didn’t...

I know we live in a world where you have to make money to enjoy certain comforts of life. Hell, I want those comforts as much as the next guy—I like having a roof over my head, thank you very much. But more often than not, the money isn’t worth the things I seem to...

Yesterday wiped me out. I think I slept more than I was awake if I’m being honest, though I don’t love admitting that sort of thing. Part of me thinks it was depression. Another thinks it might have been the amount of sugar I consumed the day before. An even bigger...