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Jumpstarting Creativity

How to Protect Your Creative Work from Criticism

One of the biggest fears that people deal with around creativity is the fear of what other people will think. Many of us try to tell ourselves that we don’t care, but this just isn’t true. We worry that we will be judged or criticized if we put our creative work out there.

Sometimes we’re worried that people will judge our work as inadequate and then we’ll feel like we have no talent as a writer or an artist. Sometimes we’re scared that others will misunderstand us and not grasp the message we’re trying to convey through our work. We might also worry that we will offend family, friends, or even strangers. Continue Reading

Tired of Your Life? Take Your Creative Power Back

Lately, I’ve been hearing from a lot of clients and students that they feel tired of their lives. This isn’t surprising, as we’ve all been in a big energetic cycle of releasing the past for a long while now. Releasing the old is always a good practice, as it helps us move into the new. But a problem that comes along with this process is not always knowing exactly what new thing you want to move into in the future.

Most of us would love to move into a new life full of freedom and creativity. We want to finally start (or finish) the book we’ve been dreaming of releasing into the world for so long, or we want to paint, draw, make music, or create something else of beauty in order to share it with a wider audience.

However, once we start thinking about making these creative dreams come true, we instantly feel afraid, even terrified. Continue Reading

Why Intuitive Writing and Deadlines Don’t Go Together

About once a month, I’ll get an email from a reader who is struggling with writing and meeting deadlines. Usually, they’ve discovered my Intuitive Writing course and they’re extremely interested in learning how to connect more deeply with their intuition to feed their creative process. They like the way I describe how they can shift their relationship with writing from stress and pressure to adventure, fun, and ease. The only problem is, they don’t quite see how they can fit that in with their current writing life needs, which involve a lot of deadlines.

Much of the time these types of writers are screenplay writers who need to turn in projects by a certain date, and also need their scripts to meet a certain set of criteria. Sometimes they are freelance writers who are writing articles on topics assigned to them by a company or nonprofit. Occasionally, I even hear from ghostwriters who are writing something that is supposed to be in someone else’s voice, and they also have a firm deadline on when the work needs to be finished.

Nearly all of these writers who email me are tired, frustrated, and feeling defeated with their writing process. They tell me they feel blocked or stuck, and they’re just pushing themselves through the writing because they know there is a deadline and they have to get it done. But every time they sit down to work on the project, they feel like they would rather be anywhere else.

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How Do I Get Over the Fear of Starting?

For writers, starting is definitely the hardest part. It’s common for writers to dream about writing their book—and holding their finished book in their hands—for months, or even years. However, when it comes time to sit down at the desk and write those first few sentences, more often than not, that’s when we experience total fear and paralysis.

Why does this happen to writers? Continue Reading

3 Better Ways to Organize Your Story for Writers Who Are Pantsers (Instead of Using a Traditional Outline)

Some writers are plotters (which means they meticulously plot every detail of their novel before they write it), and others are pantsers (which means they plan nothing and fly by the seat of their pants), but what I’ve found after working with hundreds of writers is that most writers fall somewhere between the two. Identifying as a plotter or a pantser is not a black-and-white type of situation. Instead, there are many shades of gray in between.

Since my specialty is in coaching intuitive writers, I’ve had the unique experience of seeing lots and lots of writers who lean toward the pantser side of the spectrum figure out their process. And what I can tell you is that there are many different ways to approach pantsing, and it doesn’t all have to be in a way where you do zero planning. Continue Reading