Eavesdropping At A Writers Conference

I’m at the Deep Thinkers Retreat in Destin, Florida and it’s beautiful. We come to the beach every year in February and I help facilitate the conference for the week. My main job during the conference is the care and feeding of the attendees. But I’m also watching, listening … and yes, sometimes I hear things.

Today I wanted to share some of my observations:

Eat Well, Write Well. Sorry, a steady of diet of chocolate chip cookies and malted milk balls are not conducive to clear thinking and well developed plot lines. Although they do help stabilize emotions, at least at the moment. When all else fails, have a malted milk ball instead of a melt down. For the record, I resisted the temptation this year and only succumbed to two. (Although we have two more days to go!)
Battle Uncertainty. I’ve heard, “I thought I had my story down, but now I’m not so sure.” It’s so easy to doubt yourself and question the validity of your writing.

For Writers: Three Lessons from the 2014 Winter Olympics

Yes, I’m on deadline — several deadlines as a matter of fact.

I have two blog posts due tomorrow and I’m slogging away at a novella rewrite that’s due March 1.

Even so, here I sit with my TV tuned to the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Am I wasting my time? No, not at all.

I have no Olympian aspirations, but watching these athletes have taught me a few things that are transferable to the writing life.

Celebrating Success … and Failure

In his e-book, Imagination @ Work, my writing friend, author Alton Gansky, posed this question: What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

Fun question, that.

It makes you exhale all the tension – the why nots and can’ts – and breathe in all the possibilities. The tantalizng aroma of dreams.