Writing Habits

Regardless, to actually live the life of the writer requires writing -- the actual thing itself, the literal activity of putting words together on a page.

We don't need a point. We're comfortable with the nebulous. Harry Crews is right. It's a rough south, and we're wading the swamp in the dark.

To say "I have writer's block" is to judge a temporary or permanent absence of writing momentum and productivity as wrong and therefore to see oneself as a failure in some way.

As any emerging writer knows, while the road to publication is tough and the obstacles many, there is no emotion to compare with holding your book in ...

I just had lunch with a student who has just completed a final polished draft of his memoir. He couldn't stop smiling and I couldn't stop smiling, because writing and polishing that many pages of a story is a huge accomplishment.

I did some good work today, and one of the things I found myself doing was mining and old draft of my story for nuggets of gold. I had this particular...

I decided to make a change to the start of my novel, which means hacking out a lot of pages. I'm not sure how many will have to go yet, but I will cut...

I sent 57 pages of my novel-in-progress to a friend for a critique, and last night I got back pages and pages of notes. I have some other work I have ...

I was on a roll over the weekend. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and sorted through notes and books, and integrated ideas into my text, and basically co...

Elmore Leonard famously said, "I try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip." I thought of this today, because I hacked some words out of my ...

I had a big block of time set aside today to write, and had been looking forward to it -- but, alas, my 9th grader got sick in the middle of the night...

In her book Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints, writer Joan Aconcella makes the point that art is always an emergency. I loved that line when I read ...

This morning I printed out 60 pages of my new novel to read for the first time on paper. I sharpened a pencil, cleared some space at the kitchen table...

I'm getting ready to go on a trip, and I'm so excited about the chance to write on a plane. Here are my 7 top reasons why planes are great places to w...

I wrote for seven hours today, which is an unheard-of stretch of time for me. I blocked off this chunk of time, however, because I needed to re-envisi...

Tonight after dinner, I suggested to my 14-year-old daughter that we have some tea and catch up on Project Runway, which we haven't watched for weeks...

I teach a course in writing memoir, which began today. I love memoir -- as a writer, a reader, and a teacher -- and find many joys in it, on many lev...

I have the luxury of working at home most of the time (although I start a classroom stint next week with the UCLA Extension Writers' Program) and I co...

I was tempted today to jump ahead in my story and write a juicy scene or two that will come later in the novel. The section I was working on felt a li...

Some authors write standing, while some write lying down. Some write early in the morning, while others stay up all night. Some write in a warm blanke...

work in a very quiet place. I never play music while I write. Sometimes I turn off the phone. The quiet is necessary so I can listen to the sound of my words.

I haven't been sleeping well lately. I lie in bed and my head spins -- working out problems in my book, and problems in my life. (My oldest kid starts...

My oldest daughter is about to go off to college, and so my brain is very full of thoughts and ideas that start with the phrase, "When I was in colleg...

How do you know when your writing is going well? Here are seven sure-fire signs: