Hillary Rettig

A friend and activist recently wrote to me about the difficulty she has with building "rewards" (fun, pleasure, validation, gratification, treats, etc.) into her life. She mentioned that a day trip that was supposed to be a big reward for her last month fizzled, and that left her very demoralized.

In my previous article I discussed why all businesses should indie publish -- including non-writing businesses.

Here are some guidelines for doing it right:

Clarify your goals

If you want to indie publish for a hobby, or to create a memento for loved ones, then you can just...

Indie publishing is for many businesses, not just writers! A yoga teacher earning $70 teaching a one-hour class who sells three students a $12 indie-published book, has boosted her profits more than 50%. And an independent software vendor who sells manuals for his system isn't just sweetening his bottom line...

Perfectionists, being drawn to reductiveness, dichotomization and rigidity, love labels. But the labels they use are almost always harmful in that they either denigrate the writer or increase the pressure she feels around her work. An example of good labeling would be to call writing "my job," and the particular...

Dear Indie Booksellers,

December wasn't easy, was it? As if steadily-declining sales and the threat posed by a new phalanx of holiday-purchased ereaders weren't enough, Slate's Farhad Manjoo published a widely-discussed article entitled Don't Support Your Local Bookseller: Buying Books on Amazon is Better for Authors, Better for...

Today's topic, appropriately enough, is ambivilance. We tend to think of it as a small thing -- "Should I have a donut or danish? I can't decide!" -- but in the realm of life choices, it's huge. The cliché that you can't move in two directions at once is absolutely...

Perfectionists, being drawn to reductiveness, dichotomization and rigidity, love labels. But the labels they use are almost always harmful in that they either denigrate the writer or increase the pressure she feels around her work. An example of good labeling would be to call writing "my job," and the particular...

The New York Magazine article about the James Frey atelier cum literary sweatshop has performed a valuable service by highlighting not just the desperation of MFA students to get profitably published, but the willingness of MFA programs to let their students be exploited. Frey apparently decided to bypass the...

Yes, I know about the evils of profit, and I'm obviously not arguing that you elevate it over all ethical concerns. But if you wish to be in business -- which I believe is a valid personal and activist strategy, as the world needs more green businesses -- then you...

NaNoWriMo participants aim to finish a 50,000 word novel in a single month, this month. The NaNoWriMo Website says NaNoWriMo is for, "everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved."

While radical attempts at self-improvement generally...

A MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin or maguffin) is:

A plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction. The defining aspect of a MacGuffin is that the major players in the story are (at least initially) willing to do and sacrifice almost...

The work of becoming a prolific writer -- someone who writes easily and quickly, and has fun while doing it -- is the work of managing your moment-by-moment experience of your writing. Writing is one of those activities that looks easy, but really isn't. Besides the basic intellectual challenge, writing...

"This is all a giant procrastination and you must deal with it. You must."
- Words spoken to author and then-active alcoholic Caroline Knapp by her dying father, also an alcoholic (from Knapp's book, Drinking: a Love Story)

The link between perfectionism and addiction has been well documented, but...

Greed may not be good, but speed sure is. It was only when I got into this line of work that I understood the meaning of the axiom "He who hesitates is lost." Procrastination -- the fear-based inner force that wants you not to complete your projects -- will latch...

To begin with, check out the romantic presidential couple at the bottom of the right-hand group of pictures (near the date) here. Isn't it wonderful that we elected someone who, among his many other virtues, is so loving? That's not a trivial thing, as psychologists Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks...

What's the awesomest gift you can give someone? Their life back, right?

That's what I had been thinking for a while. And so, I had been looking into donating a kidney. From my research I knew that the surgery was really safe (only 2/10,000 fatality rate, lower than for appendectomies),...

Most people think of procrastination as a simple bad habit, but it's often much more than that: it's a strategy we employ when we're afraid of the outcome of an activity or project. So, someone who hates his job might procrastinate on looking for a new one because he's afraid...

I work part-time at a nonprofit where I teach immigrants personal finance and "life success" skills. I begin each course by telling my students about how, when I was a kid 40+ years ago, my dad supported a family of five on a Post Office letter carrier's salary.

How...

How important are mentors? Let's just say that everyone I've ever met who was stuck in their life or career was severely under-mentored. In olden days, mentoring was probably more of an automatic process: you grew up working alongside your parents on the farm, or apprenticed with a local crafts-person...