Quiet Keystrokes and Midnight Ramblings

One of the hardest parts of being a writer, or doing any type of creative work, is getting it finished.  Because we type away at our own pace, get distracted by the ding of Instant Messages, have friends and family that don't see our creativity as a "real job" and have no bosses breathing down our necks... it's really easy to put off the writing until tomorrow.  Or next week.  Or a month from now. I've discovered that there are a few things that can help us to create our own deadlines, and help ourselves to actually stick to them. Deadline Tip #1: Make A Goal It doesn't matter if your goal is to submit articles to 10 magazines a month, rewrite 5 chapters of your manuscript or apply for a job in the writing/editing industry.  Take the time to figure out what it is you want to accomplish, and write it down.  I have a white-board above my monitor for such goals which makes it easy to edit them, check them off and then erase them once they've been met and

For the first time this summer I finally sat down and started on the project I swore was going to be finished by July 1st.  I began to edit the first draft of my novel. Granted, family circumstances being what they are, I was only able to edit the first three pages (out of 150... I still have a looong way to go).  But those first three pages of work have been four months in the making.  Continuously this summer I have found the novel being shoved deeper and deeper on the list of things to do; falling into second, then fourth, then 100th on the growing list after family crisis, death, remodeling, moving and any other number of things that have taken priority. Finally today when trying to figure out which of the remaining 1,000 tasks on the list should be accomplished I decided that come hell or high-water I was going to do something with the novel at the bottom of my book-bag.  If you're one of my friends or family, the red and white bag may have become very familiar to you as I h

There comes a time in each of our written lives when some injustice occurs that is just so outrageous that we are beside ourselves with emotion.  Be it rage, sympathy, hope or disdain; we writers deal with things in our own way.  We don't tend to go picketing and shouting in front of high-rise buildings, we don't raise our fists and aim for the chin, and we typically aren't found screaming red-faced at clerks or managers.  No, we writers take a different approach: we write. Somewhere along the way we discovered that the written word can be even more crippling than a well-placed throw of the fist.  We understand that we can sometimes bring more awareness and help to a cause we feel is worthy simply by writing our feelings out on paper and sending it out into the world to take on a life of its own.  And often, far more often than losing our tempers and telling the S.O.B. behind the counter just what we think of him, we feel relief and vindication as throngs of readers grasp