Do you feel loyalty pulling at you in your story? Isn't it interesting how guilt emerges when you speak your truth? Why is it that standing up for yourself or setting a boundary brings with it a sense …
Memoir
Why Writers Should Embrace Doubt
Doubt lives in each of us. We are unsure about our futures, our relationships, our new tile in the bathroom, our car insurance, etc. Doubt is the cradle of conflict, both internal and external. In the …
Transformation
A fundamental understanding of transformation is crucial to having anything more than an intellectual relationship to structure. You've probably read books on three-act-structure. But it is important …
The Value of an Outline
What's the point of an outline? Whether consciously or not, every writer is in search of a process. A lot of writers want to dive right into their first drafts and start amassing pages. Though …
How Do I Begin?
"How do I begin?" The process of story creation is mysterious. Where do your story ideas come from? From where do your characters emerge? At their core, stories are born out of an impulse to make …
Stepping Into Your True Power
What does it mean to trust yourself? It sounds like a good idea, but it is often a counter-intuitive process. It is sort of like the difference between certainty and knowing. Certainty lacks …
The Internet: A Writer’s Worst Distraction
Sometimes the deeper we get into our story, the more we seek distraction. The internet will suck the life out of any writer. It will turn the most disciplined among us into bug-eyed addicts. Not only …
What is Success?
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” - Socrates Years ago, I was on the phone with a prospective student, and he announced, “I will consider myself a failure if my book does not become a …
The Imperative for Dramatic Conflict
A director told me once that if you put two actors together in a scene without directing them or staging the scene, the conflict would begin to diminish. If the actors were on opposite sides of the …
Finding Home
“Home is where one starts from.” - T. S. Eliot There’s nothing more primal than our quest for home. The dilemma is that our childhood homes may have been confusing, chaotic, or even violent. …