In each stage of writing your book, chances are you’ll meet a most unsavory part of yourself: the Inner Critic. It’s a negative self that ...

For twelve years, I wrote a syndicated weekly newspaper column. I only had six hundred words each week, so I learned to wrap the column nea...

Every book balances immediate writing in present time and writing that feels more reflective, that shares a passage of time or an overview o...

Few books arrive fully formed. Rather they grow from regular, unflinching practice of our art and craft. Writing a book takes the same eve...

In my Madeline Island retreat on book-writing this past July, we were joined by a man who summered on the island.  He was retired from a ver...

It's September again.  Crisp school supplies, clean classrooms, launching into a fresh cycle of learning.  September for me is about bei...

A reader from Minnesota sent me a good question.  She'd taken my two-day book writing workshop at the Loft Literary Center in July, and ...

Almost the end of August, and the leaves are starting to change color here in New England.  I'm getting my teaching notes together for m...

One spring I took a month-long writing retreat. I went to a beautiful lake at the edge of the mountains and stayed by myself in a comfortab...

Writers who lock onto one picture of their books, holding it fast, being unwilling to adjust as they receive new insights, rarely publish. ...