I’ve never felt so at home in life as I do now, surrounded by other authors. It’s a good, comfortable, nurturing feeling to be in the company of others with like goals and souls. I thought that would give me what I need to feel validated, and for the most part it does. But there was something missing.
Something different drives each one of us, of course. Feeling like we’re not alone, or the only ones in a particular struggle, makes things easier to deal with. Being a writer can be a lonely, thankless, and penniless endeavor, as we all know. But we do it because we have to – because that “thing” inside of us gives us no other choice. Continue reading “What Does It Take to Get Writing?”
I’m guessing that most of us are always on the outlook for ways to increase our productivity, to open wider to inspiration, and get/keep the ideas flowing. But writing, like any art, is a process that defies capture, that eludes attempts to analyze, to reduce, to constrain. What works for one person won’t work for the next. All we can do is keep trying new things, or simply keep doing what has worked for us in the past. On a whim, I wrote my latest book in longhand.
Synchronicity [sing-kruh-nis-i-tee] is a concept developed by psychiatrist Carl Jung, who felt that it was possible for seemingly unrelated events to come together in “meaningful coincidences.” In his 
Most of us here, I think, have commiserated from time to time about plugging along slowly on a book, getting down a few hundred words a day instead of a few thousand like we’d prefer. We’d like nothing better than to turn that tap on wide open, getting the full-blown flow of words that come so fast we can barely keep up. If only we could control that tap… but how?