I’m here with the piles of notebooks and pens! (Like Mara, “an amateur psychology buff”, and also with a barely-opened copy of Writing Down the Bones —on another pile.)
I found you through your post on overcoming writing anxiety, which caught my eye because I recently overcame a very similar struggle by discovering very similar things to what you outline in that post (and some others). It was so revolutionary for me that I created a workshop to share what I’ve learned. But your article added to, refined, explained, and provided excellent examples for many of my discoveries. I’m an amateur psychology buff, and you are exploring precisely the kinds of things I find fascinating. Can’t wait to read more!
I can tell from the title of your Substack (One True Sentence) that you and I probably found the same path out of our problem. Out of curiosity, have you ever read the book Mini Habits, by Stephen Guise? In conjunction with some other good books (Namely: Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind, by Natalie Goldberg) and some timely advice from family, it served as the way out for me. I've build a lot of my thinking around generalizing the basic principle and understanding why it works.
I’m here with the piles of notebooks and pens! (Like Mara, “an amateur psychology buff”, and also with a barely-opened copy of Writing Down the Bones —on another pile.)
I found you through your post on overcoming writing anxiety, which caught my eye because I recently overcame a very similar struggle by discovering very similar things to what you outline in that post (and some others). It was so revolutionary for me that I created a workshop to share what I’ve learned. But your article added to, refined, explained, and provided excellent examples for many of my discoveries. I’m an amateur psychology buff, and you are exploring precisely the kinds of things I find fascinating. Can’t wait to read more!
Mara,
I can tell from the title of your Substack (One True Sentence) that you and I probably found the same path out of our problem. Out of curiosity, have you ever read the book Mini Habits, by Stephen Guise? In conjunction with some other good books (Namely: Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind, by Natalie Goldberg) and some timely advice from family, it served as the way out for me. I've build a lot of my thinking around generalizing the basic principle and understanding why it works.
James
I have not read those, though I own Writing Down to the Bones. I’ll move it to the top portion of my TBR list!
My path out came from several sources, but a central idea is the one of viewing creativity as a relationship. I wrote a little about that here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/maraeller/p/dear-writer-discipline-is-killing
I’d love to see how we might join forces to help more writers find their way out of similar stuck-ness!