Productivity – The Productive Author

Dictation: The Best Trick I Have Found for Writing Faster or Under Deadline

Use your voice to reach those deadlines or NaNoWriMo goals. Here’s how to write faster when you need to.

Using Pressure To One’s Advantage As a Writer

Since I’ve been fairly immersed in pressure this week, I focused on finding more ways to channel it. Here’s what I came up with. Financial Pressure – Rar! I had some writing and publishing expenses beyond my usual monthly investment. Unusual outlays of cash have always created dissonance for me as an artist, because I […]

by Cindy Grigg

Increasing Writerly Decisiveness

A lot of us tend to wring our hands that we don’t know what to do about our problems, writing problems included. But fascinatingly, we do know what to do in many cases.

by Cindy Grigg

Writing and Creativity Podcasts to Love

These days I prefer listening to my reading, as opposed to absorbing books, news, and articles with my eyes. I discovered this while pursuing my initiative to sit less and move more. We’ve probably all heard by now that sitting all day is terrible for us, and as writers we tend to sit plenty! To fight […]

by Cindy Grigg

Why Writing a Novel Feels Both Expansive and Claustrophobic

An interesting phenomenon takes place as you increase word count. Over the past year, I have been writing works of speculative fiction to several different lengths including short stories (under 7,000 words), serial episodes (about 10,000 words), novellas (about 30,000 words), and novels (70,000+ words). A Novel’s Unique Spatial Paradox I’ve found that with novels, […]

by Cindy Grigg

Leveraging Writing Conferences

As a writer, I’ve learned to love the conference scene. Actually, I’m completely drained by large social gatherings–evidence that I am a legitimate introvert. But here’s why I have evolved to deem conferences worthy of the energy expenditure! This list is in context of a few highlights from Life, the Universe, and Everything 2015 (LTUE), […]

by Cindy Grigg

Writing and Your Health

I was recently part of a local convention known as Comic Con FanX, which included a Writing and Your Health panel that covered a lot of fascinating aspects of mental, emotional, and physical health for people who are creating stuff. I loved hearing about how other panelists utilize principles of martial arts, meditation, and many other […]

by Cindy Grigg

My Automaton Writing Self: A Modus Operandi for Maelstrom

This week was a tough one. No other way to slice it. Lawless internal bedlam. Can a writer be expected to create under such conditions? Here’s why my vote is yes and no. No, as in, on some level you can’t show up like you usually do. You’re taken, by your other problems. But yes! As in, […]

by Cindy Grigg

NaNoWriMo Dropout? 5 Ways to Succeed This Year

NaNoWriMo has come and gone, leaving victors and casualties in its wake. Even though I finished my NaNoWriMo this year and in fact produce enough fiction word count to call every month a WriMo, I identify more with the dropouts because I tried to do National Novel Writing Month several times before this year–all ‘fails’! […]

by Cindy Grigg

Dictation: How I Wrote 6000 Words in 6 Miles By Going on a Writing Walkabout

You do not have to sit butt-in -chair to be productive! Learn how to write your book using dictation on a walk.