• How to Know When Done is Done

    Tweet The question that comes a lot as you write is whether what you have is ready to be published, submitted and posted. How do you know when your piece is fully baked? Sometimes you don’t know until you send it off and realized in excitement you sent it off prematurely. Sometimes you wait too long until you’ve poked and…

  • Your Money Maker: The Money Pile You’re Sitting On

    Tweet I found about a couple of hundred dollars on my laptop. What I discovered while scrolling through my past documents were raw and unpublished essays, poems, and articles. Some were there because I submitted them once and after a single rejection, completely abandoned it. Others were unfinished. I realized after further inspection that what I had was a treasure…

  • Making Sense of the Madness: Steps to Inspire Your Next Great Idea

    Tweet I haven’t been blogging here lately because I’ve been in a whirlwind of writing. I realized while lying in bed that there is madness to my process. I can drum up ideas quite quickly and when I do, there are a few steps that fuel my inspiration through the hard, stuck, I-can’t-write-another-thing parts. I steal moments to write.  Before…

  • Marketing at Miraval

    Tweet I had an amazing week at Miraval spa for my birthday. I got everything I wanted and more. One of the surprising gifts I left with, however, was a unplanned, unintentional lesson in marketing. During one of the lovely event dinners, I was introduced to two memorable people. One was the host, and the other was a fellow guest.…

  • How to Persevere Through Rejections

    Tweet If you’re suffering through a field of rejections, keep reading… It took awhile, but eventually I found a pace, my zone, an ability to actually push through my anxiety and create articles I was proud of. But more importantly, got paid for. That was a great feeling, but I didn’t sit in my laurels for long before I had a desire…

  • 18th Biennial Conference on Literature and Hawaii’s Children

    Tweet I’ve been juggling two boys under two and working on an upcoming article for Hawaii Business magazine. Plus, I’m still writing for Psych Central. I won’t lie. It’s a lot. Some days feel near impossible. But there is joy and pleasure in pursuing the written word so I do so happily even if I have to muster stored energy (which…

  • Top 10 Productivity Secrets of Famous Authors

    Tweet {guest post by Linda Craig} It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing a novel, an article that’s about to be published online, a script for a film or anything else; you’re probably bound to a specific timeline. As any other writer, you would probably want to write as much content as possible in a shorter period of time. If you’re…

  • 3 Lucky Breaks That Led Me to a Freelance Writing Career

    Tweet A lot of people want to know how to become a freelance writer. “How do you get paid for writing?” is what they often ask. When I think about what got me here, three lucky things needed to happen in order for this to occur. I met the “right” people. When I first decided to switch gears from therapist to…

  • What Editors and Agents Really Want

    Tweet All the rejections from articles, essays, and poems lay in a heavy heap over my heart. They are evidence of one thing that I have to keep learning repeatedly. Success doesn’t come from replicating successful writers. This I have to tell myself after yet another agent/teacher recommends I read a bestselling book in hopes their innovative ideas, voice or style…

  • 5 Stages of the Writing Process

    Tweet There are developmental stages for ages. Stages for grief and loss. And even stages of sleep, pregnancy and labor. So I thought why not writing? Here are the 5 stages most writers go through from idea to publication. Stage 1: Eureka! Stage 1 is probably my favorite part. It’s when ideas form from nothingness. They’re conceived when showering, walking,…