The Blank Page Is Not Your Enemy

Some days you will sit down to write and draw a big fat blank.Yeesh. Horrible feeling. I am generally of the school of thought that writer’s block comes from a lack of preparation, but sometimes you can do everything right — plan what you’re going to work on, warm up, have a nice ritual with…

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Write It Into Being

Yesterday I mentioned that putting words to the page has an interesting way of committing you to a particular course of action.It’s a powerful quirk of the brain, that handwriting solidifies your ideas, and moves you, ever so subtly, towards action.We know that handwriting is deeply involved with creativity, healing and problem-solving, but I suspect it also…

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Do Your Warm-Up

The first thing you write — whether it’s the introduction to an article or chapter, the first few lines of a journal entry, or the words to a song or poem — is almost never the right thing. The beginning of anything I write gets reworked far more than any other part, and it’s because…

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Too Much!

About a month ago I decided that, in the interest of having sufficient space in my little inner-city apartment for two adults and a dog the size of a sled, I should probably hold off on buying any more books for a while. You still have plenty of stuff you haven’t read. You don’t even…

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What’s The Subtitle Of This Story?

2021 shall forever be known in my history as the Year of the Premise. This year, more than any other in my career, there has been a relentless focus on the premise of each book I’m working on: the North Star, the strategic intent, the point. I’ve been drilling on this with clients for years, but…

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A Little Dose Of Observation

When I first started writing in earnest — as a way to understand myself better, instead of just as a way to get paid — I was in a miasma of unease and confusion. I was unhappy in my work, my relationship and my trajectory, and I could not for the life of me figure…

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Do It If You Know What’s Good For You

Remember how a few weeks ago I did that blood test and was all self-congratulatory about my bonza results? Well, one of the recommendations my doc made was to add some turmeric to my diet. Just a little to my daily protein shake at lunch. I dutifully acquired some turmeric, which is so vivid in its little…

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In Praise Of Tomatoes

This week I rediscovered the glory of the Pomodoro. Not a tasty Italian tomato, alas, only the method of time management, thus named for those cute tomato-shaped kitchen timers you can set to short intervals. It’s honestly shocking to me that between the drafting stages of one book to the next, I completely forget this…

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The Multiverse Theory

In 1933, Erwin Schrödinger won a Nobel Prize in physics for an equation he had created. The equation explained one of the fundamental questions of quantum mechanics — a field in which anything that can happen, will happen.19 years later, in 1952, Schrödinger stood up in front of a Dublin lecture hall and told the audience that…

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Only One Thing Matters

“What do you look for in a writer?”I was talking with a client this week about him hiring a junior writer, and he wanted to know how I evaluate someone’s writing, what makes me confident they know what they’re doing.He was listening very intently and ready to take down lots of notes, like he was…

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