Two helpful tips to get over our resistance to marketing: make it fun, and offer a conversation. It’s nearly impossible to do anything well that we don’t enjoy, and we don’t so much sell our books as invite readers to join a conversation.

When we write, we’re always seeking the effortless way forward. But we often meet resistance. The pain comes when we try to force our way through the resistance rather than find the better, more natural way. 

You’re an artist. You don’t have to stop being an artist just because you’re marketing your work. Keep being creative in everything you do. It’ll be more fun and more productive.

People deal with death and loss all the time. Yet writing requires us to tap into something eternal within ourselves, something undying that is always seeking expression.

It shouldn’t be hard to be yourself. What else could you possibly be? Yet writing, and the arts in general, have taught me like nothing else that being myself requires as much trust as anything I’ve ever done. 

Sometimes our stories don’t meet our readers expectations of what a story is supposed to be. That’s okay. Our job is always to meet our own expectation. It’s all we can do anyway. 

Whatever we think about other writers, we think about ourselves. Never call an author whose work you don’t enjoy “bad.” It’s only a matter of time before you look at your own stories and believe they stink and that you have no talent. 

Getting feedback from writing groups, beta readers, agents, and editors is just fine. But once the story or book is finished, it’s okay not to listen to criticism. It’s time to move on, and hopefully hear from the readers who liked what you’ve ...

Sometimes in life it can feel like our choices don’t matter. But writing teaches us that all our choices matter, the big ones and the small ones. Those decisions we make are the focus for our creative power. 

Writing is all about asking questions and waiting for answers. But we don’t want to ask the wrong questions, the ones to which we only want one answer, like: Am I any good?

Writing has taught me like nothing else that what matters most in life can’t be given to me or taken from me.

Stories can help tune us to the good part of life, what always exists beneath the surface. The good part is why life is worth living, though it’s easy to forget as we focus on the dull business of mere survival. It’s always worth it to remind y...

Just as we can’t worry what people think of our stuff while we’re writing, so too the best way to be with others in social situations is to not try to please them. 

Very simple: show up, be curious, be interested, be open, and the details necessary to tell your story will come to you. Do your job and let the rest take care of itself. 

It’s not anyone else job to accept what is unique about you or your work. That’s your job. Once you have, however, others will have to agree with you. 

Our readers' lives and preferences influence how they receive our story. We can’t control that. So, we must give it away, metaphorically, and trust the right people will find it. 

If we’re not sincerely, authentically, personally interested in what we’re writing, we won’t succeed. As creative people, we must constantly ask ourselves, “What am I actually interested in? What do I care about?”  

The only way to learn is from experience, and everyone has to experience something to learn not to do it. As creative people, we will make mistakes, and plenty of them. The only way not to be afraid of those mistakes is to forgive them...

The page is blank. You may be writing about the world you’ve experienced, but the meaning you find for your stories always starts in you – nowhere else.  

Artists can start believing too much in struggle and in what they find difficult. However, what comes most easily to us is usually the expression of our natural genius, where our interest wants to go.

Writing requires inspired ideas. But we can’t demand them, can’t use our craft to manufacture them. But we can practice putting ourselves into the frame of mind that allows and invites them.

As Richard Bach pointed out: writers aren’t looking for an editor or a publisher, but a member of their intellectual family. They’re out there, but you have to believe they exist to find them.

We need our readers to fill in what we leave out; it’s what really finishes a story. This means we have to trust them, even though sometimes they don’t make the connections we hope. 

As Beethoven no doubt knew – there’s nothing better than joy, and creativity teaches us again and again it’s always inside of us, never outside of us. 

The time I learned why being an author is so valuable, and how we can use this authority to allow people to believe the stories they actually want to believe.