Time management is an important skill that can be difficult to achieve for authors. You can’t just hope it will happen, you need to work on it. This can be difficult when you have a busy schedule and you’re trying to balance work, school, extracurricular activities, and family. Fortunately, there is an alternative to traditional… Read more »
Recently, I launched Kris Clink’s Writing Table, a podcast to help new writers learn from authors and publishing experts as we explore books, the writing craft, and the varied paths to publishing. It’s been a joy to hear firsthand from authors who are responsible for my favorite books. Kathleen Barber, Kimberly Belle, Lyn Liao Butler,… Read more »
“Go slow, work on it a section at a time, and never paint with a dry brush.” Yeah, my dad may have been talking about painting a wall when he told me this, but this advice applies to pretty much everything else in life too—especially writing a novel. Go Slow First off, writing a novel… Read more »
The world is an overwhelming and chaotic place lately. How can you be expected to deal with everything on your plate and still find time to write? It’s tempting to blame recent events for our lack of personal time and ability to manage it. But if we are honest with ourselves, we would recall how… Read more »
“I’m so busy I barely have time to write! How am I supposed to work on building my author brand, too?” For those of us who have other full-time commitments, it can be hard to find the time to work on our writing projects, let alone focus on building an author brand. However, that doesn’t… Read more »
There’s a common theory (presented here by my time-management guru, Laura Vanderkam) that suggests that book-lovers either fall into the “supply” or “demand” category of readers. A supply-side reader builds reading into her life and has habits and schedules that support reading. For example, a supply-side reader will always keep a book next to her… Read more »
Over the years, I’ve read a lot of books about the craft and process of writing. Almost invariably, when discussing the all-consuming writing routine, the author will say something like this: “You must keep your writing time sacred. That means you’ll have to say no to things to which you might otherwise say yes. If… Read more »
Finding a useful author tool can make all the difference to a writer’s life. After all, the best tools help us to do things in a more efficient and effective way. They allow us to focus on our writing, rather than being slowed down and distracted by carrying out tasks in a suboptimal fashion. To… Read more »
In the last Be Well, Write Well post, I wrote about the perspective of having abundant time. Today, I’m going to show you that time is not only abundant in the macro sense, it can also feel abundant on the micro level—in the weeks, days and hours that make up the building blocks of our… Read more »
My grandmother recently passed away at 99 years old. When she was born, in 1919, the average life expectancy for a white American women (higher than that for males, or people of color) was 56 years old. As a child, the idea of a 99 year-old person, let alone her own ability to live to… Read more »
