Wild Magic. Wild Stories. Wild Souls.
When I first started my writing career, I was a starry-eyed graduate student with little more than a head full of dreams and a heart full of stories, clutching a copy of Writing Down the Bones to my chest. I wrote for the sheer joy of it, the exhilaration, the thrill. I didn’t care about […]
Read MoreSelf-doubt is a part of most people’s lives, but those of us walking a creative path are particularly susceptible. Self-doubt has the potential to stop us in our tracks, to paralyze us. It is, without a doubt, the number one cause of writer’s block. So, is there anything we can do? I am no stranger […]
Read MoreLately I’ve been struggling with the notion of success—what it means, how we define it, how we unconsciously internalize cultural definitions of success and make them our own. And, ultimately, what it truly means to lead a successful, meaningful, purposeful life. This year, I’ve struggled with my writing. I’m approaching four years of writing full […]
Read MorePerhaps it is that late autumn is a period for introspection, for turning inward, but I feel that I am starting to ask the right questions. Not, “Is who I am today who I was meant to be?” (which is what I would’ve asked a few years ago), but “Is who I am today who […]
Read MoreLately I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my creative path. There’s a lot of chatter in the writing blogosphere about word counts—how much we have written, or how much we should have written. I’ve heard some writers say they write 500 words a day. I’ve heard others say that if you can’t write […]
Read MoreI have been absent from the blogosphere for a while, taking a sort of mini-sabbatical. In the past two months I’ve rekindled my love of poetry, discovered the perfect banana bread recipe, and mostly just tried to figure out my next steps. It happened like this: I was going strong, often writing 2,500 words a […]
Read MoreEver since I left my teaching job, the words have been flying as fast as I could type them. I had a plan, clear goals and was zooming toward them. And then, two weeks ago, I just got stuck. And I couldn’t seem to get unstuck. It was partly the dose of reality that hit […]
Read MoreNovember will mark two years since I left my magazine writing job to write fiction full time. (I was writing fiction part time before then.) I’ve grown in so many ways since that time, started so many new projects, and really found my voice as a writer. And there’s one phrase I’ve found myself repeating […]
Read MoreOver the years, I’ve come to accept that feelings like fear, anxiety, and doubt are part of the creative process. Fear of success, fear of failure, fear of sharing our work with others…All of these feelings come and go. I recently discovered a great YouTube video about fear in our writing careers that I thought […]
Read MoreA few weeks ago, I suddenly found myself stuck on the project I was working on, revisions on a novella. I was, of course, incredibly frustrated with myself for my lack of progress. Now that the wheels are turning, my perspective has changed. I see I actually made quite a bit of progress during that […]
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Denise D. Young 