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Grant Mulligan's avatar

I’ve never read anyone who so often and accurately captures my inner monologue, Gena.

I think your point that “fluent writing is not the default” is spot on. There’s reason to believe the grind gets easier with time and practice. Or so I tell myself. But you also hit on something I’m struggling with, is there something about the way I practice that is holding back better results?

It’s like weight training. If you go to the gym regularly you’re liable to get stronger. But there’s a big difference in the pace of growth if you do the right exercises, with proper form and recovery. I’m with you, trying to figure out the conditions that work instead of beating myself up over my slow progress.

Thanks for sharing this. The honest reflection helped me do some of my own!

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Carrie-Ann Biondi's avatar

Some of this really resonates with me, Gena, especially the "edit as I write" and "gotta read/research more" parts, as I also am in the midst of writing my first book. What a different beast in some ways from writing an article!

What has been helping me a lot is to spend five minutes each morning briefly journaling about three things: (1) what "create" means to me today; (2) what I visualize myself doing, feeling, hearing, tasting (usually lots of tea), seeing while working; and (3) what specific action I will take that day to get me one step closer to producing the book. I have also committed to a minimum of 60 minutes daily--no excuses--of working to meet my specific daily goal identified in (3). This makes it both extremely doable and enjoyable (in the "flow" sense) for me. I have surprisingly come to love the writing process--and I did not expect that at all!

I have been doing this every single day since January 12th and am now in the middle of Chapter 5 (of 8 chapters) on a book I am provisionally titling Spirituality for Secular Souls. Cheers to each of us bringing our deeply meaningful book projects into existence!

P.S.--If you have any tips about literary agents, publishers, etc., I'm all ears. No longer being in academia makes this more challenging than it would otherwise be, and I do not want to self-publish.

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