I'm about to go up to Lake Arrowhead to give a weekend writing retreat and I just found two quotes to open the retreat with. Both express how I feel about writing, how we're always beginners when we face the blank page. “We work in the dark – we do what we can – we…
Getting Started
Getting Started
Eighteen Miles of Books
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 17 Comments
Welcome back! I hope you all had a productive summer – and if not productive then lazy and happy. I'm in New York right now and spent yesterday afternoon with a daughter at the Strand Bookstore – 18 miles of books! And I just delivered the final manuscript for A Year of Writing Dangerously which will be…
Getting Started
The Voice That Chirps and Chips
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 6 Comments
We’re so good with the negative voices: You idiot, what kind of an idea is that? Who do you think you are to be writing a book? Why are you sitting there in your bedroom slippers writing about your boring life? Who cares? When that voice starts chirping in your head and chipping away at…
Getting Started
Hanging Out With Writers
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 6 Comments
I attended the annual UCLA Extension Writers’ Program Retreat last weekend – a time to hang out with other writing instructors and to be part of sessions that explore new writing exercises and teaching challenges etc. Picture the best party you’ve ever been to with the most interesting people you know with enough things…
FYI Publishing Tips, Getting Started
Beyond Our Own Navels
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 8 Comments
It is now September. I don’t know how it can be September but it is and no doubt you’re as stunned as I am at how fast the summer went. I’m sitting at my computer up in Montana trying to write an essay that’s part of a book proposal I need…
Getting Started
Getting Started: The Secret to Writing
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 9 Comments
Have you started writing this year? Or are you continuing what you were writing in 2008? More often than not there’s a but when people tell me they want to write. But I don’t know where to begin, but I don’t have the time, but I don’t have writing skills, but I’d be embarrassed…
