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How to chart your energy
Are you judging your skills by how they measure up to the status quo? I know I’m skilled at organizing, but then wonder why I fall down at things like schedules. Why did I succeed as a managing editor, but fail as a project manager? Using a prompt from Kerri Twigg, for a couple of weeks,…
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The merits of maintenance
Sparks of creativity! BOOM a brilliant idea! It can be exhilarating to come up with a fresh idea. But how are you going to execute it? How are you going to tend to that idea and watch it grow?
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Are you writing with your head or your gut?
The New York Times recently profiled book editor Judith Gurewich. In addition to being the publisher of Other Press, Gurewich is a Lacanian analyst. Perhaps because she was trained in an aural tradition—listening to patients, asking questions—Gurewich employs a unique method for editing books: she has authors read their manuscripts aloud. “When my stomach intervenes,…
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This/Not That
So, you’re embarking on a new writing project. You have a sense of the setting, character, and themes. You might even know what your characters get up to (plot) and how quickly the story will roll along (pace). While it’s good to know what your story is, it’s also helpful to know what it is not, or…
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Learn from your art
In their classic book, Art & Fear, David Bayles and Ted Orland advise the reader to Make objects that talk—and then listen to them. Your work needs to speak for itself—it needs to feel alive and it needs to communicate to the reader or viewer without your intervention.
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There’s a lot you’re not saying
As an editor, it’s my job to poke the writer when I feel they’re not getting to the point or when they’re holding back on details. Oftentimes I’m poking a sore spot that the writer doesn’t want to address: a trauma that occurred, or a difficult theory they need to work out. We then determine…
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Keep it light and keep it moving
I post about creativity every weekday on my Instagram page. These posts focus on practical writing tips, but are grounded in how we make space for writing, how we need to give ourselves permission to create and to fail in the process. Above all, I believe that making art needs to feel possible, which is…
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Creativity is private
In his essay on nature and creativity, The Tree, John Fowles speaks to the tendency to ascribe meaning to the world by classifying it. The belief is that we can’t know something until we can see it, describe it, name it, and determine its use—as a resource, as a species linked to or distinguished from…
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Guesswork is artwork
The dancer and choreographer Agnes de Mille said: Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark. Leaping in…
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6 Essential Lessons for All Storytellers
Carolyn O’Hara breaks down the components of great storytelling in this 2014 article from the Harvard Business Review.
