Day 28: Removing the Obstacles

Well, we have just a few days left in the December 2009 Writing Marathon. Some of you are chugging along reaching those goals; some of you are simply writing a little bit very day. For me, this has been a very up-and-down sort of a month. November was extraordinarily busy for me and December proved […]

Day 20: What’s Your Mantra?

Dec09WM20We’re two-thirds of the way through, and from what many of you have been sharing, this has been a “busy-insane-nutso” month for many of us. Still, regardless of whether or not you’ve written or revised one chapter or several, there’s something we can all learn from being this busy. Sometimes, in order to write we need to shut off our brains and just put our fingers on the keyboard. (Like Yoda says, “Do or do not, there is no try.”)

Day 15: On Dealing with Insecurity

Dec09WM15If you think about it, writers, artists and musicians have everything in the world working against us — because conventional wisdom tells us we’re not “supposed” to make money doing this. We’re supposed to suffer, because that’s part and parcel of being an artist.

Many writers that hear this message get discouraged, and often take it to heart by worrying about “only” getting published through this channel or that, or by giving away their work for free because they don’t think they’ll ever be good enough.

Day 14: The One Thing That “Just Doesn’t Matter”

Dec09WM14Well, we’re just about to the halfway mark for the December Writing Marathon, and I have a “new” confession to make…

I stopped counting the number of words I’m revising and wading through, and am going to wait until the end to tally up my goals.

Day 13: Dealing With Holiday Stress

Dec09WM13So here we are almost halfway through December and the words — my words — have been slowing down to a trickle. This week I had a problem with the number sixteen…sixteen inches of snow which translated to sixteen extra hours of commute time between driving, defrosting my car, etc. Additionally, this is my busiest season at Musicnotes.com, because we’ve got an immense collection of digital sheet music for the winter holidays that we’re highlighting to help people find the songs they want to play.