Writing with a Day Job

Back when you were working a FULL TIME JOB (in finance?) what was your schedule like? Did you have to burn a lot of midnight oil, and come to work exhausted the next day? How did it feel and what tips might you have for those of

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Back on the horse

To Our Hostess: If you’re still looking for topics, how about something on getting back to writing after one of those periods of stress that justifies dropping writing like a hot rock while you cope? You’ve touched on it in various posts about being stuck, but I

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Cross-training creativity

If you or anyone you know is at all serious about a sport, running, or exercise, you’re probably familiar with the concept of cross-training. The idea is that you improve faster and are more likely to avoid injury if you do more than one type of exercise

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Stress

Stress affects everybody’s writing, one way or another, sooner or later, because stress is part of life. How stress affects people’s writing varies from writer to writers. For some folks, writing is an escape, so the more stressed they are, the more they write (though this isn’t

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Not Talking About It

A while back, I got a deceptively simple question with an apparently obvious answer, all of which turn out to be neither so simple nor so obvious as they at first seemed. The question was, in essence, “What parts of your writing career can you talk about

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Six things I wish I’d known

Last Friday, Minnesota Public Radio reran a series of round-table shows in which they asked groups of people from various professions – teacher, musician, entrepreneur, doctor – what six things they wish they had known when they were starting out in their profession. Most of the answers

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Finding Time

Everybody has too much to do, always. You can tell, because half the time, the first thing people ask a writer is “When do you find time to write?” (the other half the time, the first thing is “Where do you get your ideas?” and the second

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Getting Ready for Next Year

We’re coming down to the end of 2013. A lot of folks use the week between Christmas and New Years to “clean house” – that is, they take stock of where they are, clear up outstanding projects, and generally get ready to start the new year on

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