A week ago Monday, I lugged home a (clean) trash sack stuffed with ten (very clean, empty) cigar boxes all the way from Pasadena. It seemed like a good idea at the time because I’m excited about collage and assemblage right now and sturdy wooden cigar boxes are a handy size for small assemblage pieces. […]

Do you allow your perceived limitations to stop you from starting? I do it, all the time. The other day I had an absolute bolt of inspiration about how to begin the first of  a series of recordings I have been wanting to create for about two years. I have had the tools to make […]

  The more I read and experience and observe creative people, the more I notice how we get in our own way and limit our creativity by imposing rules about the conditions we require in order to create. We might be convinced we can only create using specific tools or in a certain setting or […]

Creative Time Management

by Barbara Martin

in How to Tips

Way back in January, I decided to try out a new-to-me technique: selecting a theme word for the new year. So now it’s time for the first quarterly report.  According to my old MBA training, anyway.  Have you tried doing this theme word thing? What word(s) did you pick? Or did the theme pick you? I […]

The devil’s propensity for details pokes specifically at perfectionists. The details of any project are the perfectionist’s easy target. Let’s dot each i and cross each t and for heaven’s sake let’s make sure the apostrophes line up just so. Can you relate to this vision of hell? I’ve written about perfection before, and recently […]

Special Daily Writer Note

by Barbara Martin

in How to Tips

To encourage writers participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) I started writing The Daily Writer Notes, sending out an encouraging little email each morning.  The series sure kept me writing at least a little something every single day!  I enjoyed writing these so much that I’ve decided to keep on writing them every day […]

License to Write Badly

by Barbara Martin

in Writing Daily

As a writer, how often do you stop to reread your work and then agonize over what you just wrote because it’s not perfect? How much time to you spend mulling exactly where to start a scene, debating the perfect first line for the fifth chapter, toying with the perfect verb for a key sentence, […]

Family and friends must understand that your writing time is important. It’s beyond important: it’s sacrosanct. It’s not interruptible. But it’s not fair to ask family and friends to allow you the time you need to write — to take your writing seriously and to support your creative efforts — unless you yourself take it […]

Set Aside Time to Write

by Barbara Martin

in Writing Daily

Any big writing project, or even a modest writing project (is any writing project modest? I don’t think so!) requires you to sit down and actually write. Finding the time to write is a matter of priority setting and a matter of logistics. Once you’ve cleaned up your calendar and eliminated any “extra” responsibilities, look […]

You may be wondering about all the NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month fuss. Wondering why anyone would even want to try to write a novel in a month or 50,000 words of anything in thirty days. At that pace, the quality will be subpar and the burnout risk is above average. Let’s be bluntly […]