Cynthia Harrison
Novelist
Tag: motivation
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Guns & Opera: Blasting Through Stubborn Starts
I’m talking about a novel but this could be advice for starting anything, from a diet to an exercise program to a new career. I’ve been working on a book for awhile now. Various things got in the way, mostly myself. I was ill, I was tired, the room wasn’t the right color. Maybe not…
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Words on Fire
Only four dry days in June 1977, the year my basement flooded. Elvis hadn’t died yet, but another, more personal loss happened under my feet as I slept. My basement filled halfway up the stairs with water. The chaos involved in that was nothing to a big drama in three small boxes that seemed no big…
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Don’t Want to Write
Today, and to be totally honest, lots of days this summer, I have not been in the mood to write. It used to be that I did it anyway. First thing. Now I look at email and Twitter and Facebook first. I am upset that somehow I lost my writing routine. Social media is a…
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Just Three Pages
“Just three pages” is the mantra I picked up from Julia Cameron. She was referring to three pages of journals, but I use it as a goal for my novel pages every day. Every morning I wake up knowing I’ll write those three pages and maybe more. It wasn’t always this way. I used to talk…
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The Do-Over
It’s not the only way, but the best way I know to handle a writing slump is to simply move through it. Yesterday, I was a little worried. My spark was dying. I could feel it. This morning I woke to the full catastrophe: I had lost my writing joy. I didn’t want to work on…