On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
Here’s one of my favorite quotations from Eleanor Roosevelt:
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
I highly recommend A Year of Miracles by spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson. In it, Marianne offers guidance and spiritual support for following the path of love. Here’s a thought-provoking reflection:
Faith is power. It changes your life by changing you. It places you on a different ground of being within yourself. It gives you a confidence based on something that’s in you but not of you, that can do for you what you can’t do for yourself. It keeps you from sinking into victim consciousness—a stance that attracts more victimization—and lifts you to positivity, which attracts more positive outcomes. Where we put our faith literally and directly influences what happens next.
I can have faith in the power of the world, or faith in the power of miracles. I can have faith in the power of fear, or faith in the power of love. I can have faith in the power of eternal things, or faith in the God who lives within me.
Source: A Year of Miracles by Marianne Williamson, Day 215
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
In her latest release, 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round, novelist Jami Attenberg shares her advice and that of over 50 other writers.
Here’s an inspiring essay from Michael Weber:
Here’s something you probably already know: it’s too easy to avoid writing.
So my advice is to be hard on yourself about finding the time to write—extremely hard—but then be kind to yourself after that. Don’t worry about quality. Just put the time in, day after day. Make writing more important than any other things in your life. Because anyone can write when they feel like it, when they have a good idea, when they’re not sick or hungover or tired. I recommend writing when you don’t feel like it, when you have no good ideas, when you couldn’t be more busy and have a hundred reasons not to write. Turn writing into something you have to do.
My self-esteem is tied to my productivity. If I don’t write, I don’t feel good about myself. I’m no longer scared to write poorly because the worst feeling is not writing at all.
Source: 1000 Words, p. 161
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
Librarian and author Terah Shelton Harris shared the following thought-provoking advice in a recent post on the Writer Unboxed blog:
As a published writer, how do you define success?
That’s the question I posed to myself and two of my writing besties, Jason Powell, author of No Man’s Ghost, and Meagan Church, bestselling author of The Girls We Sent Away. Their answers, as well as mine, truly surprised me.
There are thousands of authors who never get their books in front of audiences. And thousands more who do, but never get any acclaim, Powell says. He believes it’s a cliché to tell an author that just being published is a victory and a mark of success if that author doesn’t yet feel accomplished. And some may feel a sense of accomplishment for having finished a book they felt comfortable sending out, because that was their goal.
“Make a list, no matter if it’s one item long or a hundred. I think even if one of those things is checked off, you’re a success,” he said.
Powell says his book is successful because people he didn’t send it to have read it. “It’s a weird feeling opening up something you’ve created to public opinion, but not a totally unpleasant one. I wanted this opportunity and I’m thankful to God and so many people that I’ve had it. It’s such a win to have someone pay money to read my thoughts.”
For Church, success for her as an author is if her books are widely available in stores and libraries, well received by readers, and bring financial returns for her.
“My goal is to write emotionally charged stories that engage the reader,” she says. “So, to be successful, I need for my books to have the opportunity to get into the hands of readers who will connect with them and do so in a way that I can afford to invest more time into writing more stories.”
Both of Church’s books have enjoyed wide distribution in bookstores and libraries and have certainly gotten into the hands of readers who are connecting with the stories on deep levels and in favorable ways, she says.
“Because my books released in 2023 and 2024, and taking into account the pace of reporting, we are still early in the financial part of the equation, but I was thrilled that I earned out my first book on my first statement. Now, future royalties will be earnings, giving me the ability to keep writing.”
The definition of success differs from writer to writer. It’s not always what you think it is. It could be as lofty as making the New York Times bestselling list or earning out an advance or simply finishing a book. Armed with their answers as well as my own self-reflection, I was finally able to define success and it’s what I originally imagined it to be.
My book is successful because it exists, because people have read it, and that’s enough for me.
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
A long-time fan of bestselling authors and coaches Marc and Angel Chernoff, I look forward to reading their emails and blog posts. Here’s an excerpt from a recent post:
It’s not always what happens that determines your mood, but how you express what happens that counts. For instance, when an optimist experiences a bout of success she might say, “That’s just as I had anticipated; I studied hard and my diligence paid off,” while a pessimist might say, “Wow, was I lucky to get such a good grade on that test,” not giving herself any credit and literally snatching her own defeat from the hands of victory.
If an optimist encounters a do-it-yourself project she can’t figure out, she’s likely to say something like, “Either the instructions I’m following are unclear, or this project is going to require a bit more effort than I thought… or maybe I’m just having a rough moment here.” In other words, an optimist uses positive self-talk to keep the struggle outside herself (“the instructions”), specific (“more effort”), and temporary (“a rough moment”), while the pessimist would likely get down on herself and interpret the same struggle as internal, widespread, and everlasting.
Go ahead and follow in the optimist’s footsteps by speaking to yourself in a more positive way regardless of whether you succeed or fail, and you’ll gradually become more optimistic.
Physical body language is also important. Your smile actually influences your mood in a positive way. When you feel down, your brain tells your face that you’re sad, and your facial muscles respond by putting on a frown, which in turn conveys a message back to your brain that says, “Yep, we’re feeling unhappy.” On the average day (when nothing extreme is happening) you can flip the switch on this internal reaction by adjusting your facial muscles into a smile so they don’t correspond to what you’re feeling. This is a clever way of sending a different message back to your brain: “Hey, life is still pretty good and I’m doing OK.” And you’ll actually begin to feel a little better, gradually.
Note: I highly recommend subscribing to Marc & Angel’s
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
Whenever I need a boost, I reread Write Smart, Write Happy by award-winning author Cheryl St. John. Here’s an uplifting excerpt:
Remember to celebrate the goals you achieve; don’t dwell on what didn’t work. Never compare yourself to anyone, because you’re special just the way you are. You have the ability to dream a dream no one else can. You’re going to write the books only you can write.
Continue to learn. Be aware, curious, and open-minded. Be a reader. Most of us came to be writers because of our love of reading. When we get busy with deadlines, it’s easy to let that first love slip away. Renew that love. Fill the well. Remind yourself why you love stories, why you want to write.
And above everything else: Believe in yourself. Draw on and draw out the writer inside. You’re the only writer like you—the only person who can write your unique individual stories. You’re the only person who can make your dream come true. You have the tools and the desire. Hold onto the unshakeable truth that you can do this and you will move forward.
Source: Write Smart, Write Happy by Cheryl St. John, p. 261
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
In her latest release, 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round, novelist Jami Attenberg, shares her advice and that of over 50 other writers.
Here’s an inspiring essay from Celeste Ng:
I am a perfectionist by nature so the drafting stage is hard for me. It is really hard to just move forward and put something down on paper because part of my brain is always screaming, “But it’s not quite right! Erase it! Erase it NOW!
But I’ve also learned that it is very rare to get something completely right on the first try—and it’s approximately nine million times easier to revise something from “not great” into “actually kind of decent.” So for me, the key is getting something down, and even when it’s imperfect—which is always—it usually points me in the direction I need to dig in.
Over the years, I’ve collected a bunch of analogies for the writing process that helps me override that type-A instinct in my brain, at least temporarily. In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott talks about the first draft being the “down draft” (just get it down), and the second draft being the “up draft” (when you fix it up).
And then there’s a sign I have over my writing desk which I glance up at as needed. It just says ‘WORRY ABOUT THAT LATER.”
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
On Fridays, I receive Hope Clark’s newsletter, Funds for Writers. Here’s a thought-provoking essay from a recent email:
Ah! how could I possibly quit the world before bringing forth all that I felt it was my vocation to produce? ~Ludwig van Beethoven (December 16, 1770–March 26, 1827)
I’ve always loved Beethoven. After 5 years of lessons as a child, he is one I remember most. All that musical brilliance given to someone ironically destined to lose the ear to hear it. But nobody denied that he didn’t spend every minute of the time he had creating the best he could, as often as could, to leave behind a legacy of genius.
You do not know today what you can amount to in ten years, twenty, or more. All you can do is give it your best today, then better tomorrow, then the next. Stopping and saying that it’ll never happen only serves to prove you right. It can’t happen without you diligently chipping away at improving.
Most of the time success happens when you don’t expect it, because you’re too busy getting better at what you do. When you constantly hunt for it, you waste energy that best could be used to hone your craft. Beethoven saw his life as a limited commodity, and his duty to make the most of it. He did.
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
A long-time fan of bestselling authors and coaches Marc and Angel Chernoff, I look forward to reading their emails and blog posts. Here’s an excerpt from a recent post:
In order to be optimistic, you have to be generally content with your life. In order to find this contentment, you have to look within yourself. Happiness after all is mostly an inside job.
If you constantly look for happiness outside yourself, by tying it to a specific achievement you must reach for example, you have two big problems:
You may never succeed. – If you feel like something is wrong with you and absolutely needs to be fixed ASAP, but you continuously fall short of fixing it, you will start yourself on a downward spiral where every time you fail to fix it you feel even worse. Eventually you will be unable to succeed simply because you no longer believe in your ability to do so.
You may succeed and decide you want even more. – If you feel like something is wrong with you and absolutely needs to be fixed, and you succeed at fixing it, you will likely find something new about yourself that needs fixing too. Maybe you’ve lost 20 pounds, but now you want tighter abs. Maybe you’ve paid down your debt, but now you want a bank account with a million dollars in it. You get the idea. It’s a never-ending cycle for your entire life. You never reach it, because you’re always looking for happiness from external achievements. You don’t find the happiness from within so you look to other sources.
Optimists set boundaries and disconnect long-term achievement from daily contentment and happiness — they give themselves permission to enjoy each moment without the need for anything more. This isn’t to say that they are complacent. They still set goals, build habits, help others, and grow, but they learn to indulge joyously in the journey, not the destination.
Note: I highly recommend subscribing to Marc & Angel’s website.
Joanne Guidoccio 