Fear of Being Hurt = Need for Control That equation has been around since our caveman days… Caveman fears being eaten by sabre-toothed tiger. Caveman starts fires around the perimeter of his encampment. …

“Be a sponge.” ~ That was the best advice I had ever been given by a professor. Learn from everyone, anyone, all the time. If you don’t stay open to knowledge, you won’t grow in any métier. “Be yourself.” ~ Another advice gem, but one I’ve fought with over the…

Your mind’s eye saw the start of your tale. You motored along… click-clacking away with wild abandon… Then, your fingers stopped. You stared at the screen. Your mind went blank. The cursor blinked on, and off, and on, and off, and OH, FOR THE LOVE OF PETE!, and off… You…

New writers… they’re a special breed. Coming off eons of notebook navel-gazing scribbles and polished pro reading… these new scribes KNOW what’s good and what’s not, and by gum, they’ll write freakishly polished first drafts, or not write at all! If The New Yorker or the New York Times don’t…

I swear… So-called online experts want to scare the poo-poo out of new writers with their pressure-mounted one-liners, like, “Your first sentence, your first page, must be stellar!” A new writer reads this, and thinks, Man, the last thing I ever did that was stellar was accidentally fly my HUUUUGE…

Fear… It’s the №1 driving force behind writers not writing. People look at fear as a bad thing, when in reality it’s truly your friend. That emotion warns you of perils ahead. *But what if those perils are merely imagined, and not real?* Writers, artists, more than any other societal…

Remember back… When your parents made you do some back-breaking chore that was dirty and awful and boring, and you felt was a complete waste of time, but to get your allowance, you kept that verbal goodie to yourself, and did it anyway? Remember less far back… When a university…

Wacky Scenario… So, one day, I decide I’d like to be a body builder. I read one lousy article on the profession, get inspired, and say, “Yup, that’s the thing for me!” So, I head to the gym, and lift weights until I can’t lift weights anymore. I head home…

Have you ever watched a kitten? They chase and jump at any new and shiny thing that gets their attention… while their mommy cat watches… If a mother cat could manufacture a look of disdain at her hair-brained kits, it would be in this moment. The mother cat knows all…