Last summer, I started writing a book about living with intention so that I didn’t die with regrets. My working title: Not Dead Yet.
The writing was going well. I was exchanging pages regularly with another coach. I was starting to believe that maybe, just maybe, I might see this […]
I contemplated writing a memoir for four years before I started writing one in earnest. During those years, I took notes, wrote some scenes, created a list of memories, read other memoirs, played with structure. But I didn’t write consistently. Instead, I wrote when I felt like it, when I […]
I’ve worked as a writer ever since I graduated with a journalism degree in 1982. For almost every piece of writing I’ve done, I’ve had a contract to write it ahead of time. I’ve known the topic, the length, the audience, and how much I’d be paid for my efforts.
With […]
A few weeks ago, I was nearing the end of a daylong intensive with a client who’d come to me for help mapping out a nonfiction book. When the day began, she spoke of wanting to write a book about leadership—something that might gather together years of insight she’d gained […]
I recently started a new writing project and for the last few days have been engaged in a full-on dogfight with fear and doubt. The project didn’t start with fear. Instead, it began—and progressed—like all my writing projects:
A vague idea that had been with me for several months started to […]
There is no one on the planet with the same personality, passion, experience, intellect, ideas and perspective that you have. Your unique gifts were given to you for a reason, and I happen to believe—dare I say it?—on a spiritual level that we were given our gifts in order to […]
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that every one of us has experienced something we’d rather not talk about. A traumatic incident. A crushing failure. An embarrassing mistake. A time we were so divorced from our true wants and needs that we acted out of character […]
By George Saunders, The Guardian
Many years ago, during a visit to Washington DC, my wife’s cousin pointed out to us a crypt on a hill and mentioned that, in 1862, while Abraham Lincoln was president, his beloved son, Willie, died, and was temporarily interred in that crypt, and […]
