The First Time I Got Paid for Doing It
In a terrific essay Linda Summersea describes the night she, a high school junior, received a check for her winning entry in Lions Clubs International’s annual World Peace Essay Contest.
All aspiring essay writers should read this not just for its encouragement but also for its demonstration of how details produce powerful writing.
How Mindfulness Can Transform Your Writing Life
The more I practice mindfulness in my personal life, the easier it is to translate this skill to my writing.
In this short piece Vanessa Carnevale describes how taking a deep breath and writing down an intention (to be deleted later) helps her produce her best writing.
7 Simple Hacks to Get Writing When You Just Can’t
Kellie McGann offers some advice on how to write on those days when you think you can’t. There’s nothing ground-breaking here, but I find it tremendously helpful to be frequently reminded of these approaches to getting words onto the page or computer screen.
Writing as Responsibility
Sara Jones acknowledges that as a writer she has a responsibility to create something for the larger good, “but also – and possibly most of all – for myself. I must own my responsibility in making sure that happens.”
Finding Myself in a Book
Kelly Haworth describes how writing the YA novel Y Negative helped her discover her own genderfluid identity:
Writing Y Negative changed my life. It taught me that these feelings and ideas I had experienced since I was in high school were not me “pretending I was crazy.” They were real and other people felt and experienced them too. Writing this book let me express the emotions of trying to figure everything out – the pain, the awkwardness and the strength – and I emerged on the other side knowing that this pendulum inside me, this duality of male and female was exactly who I was. I identify as genderfluid now… .