As the second quarter of 2023 begins, it's a great time to reflect on your writing goals for the year. Have you made progress towards achieving them? Have you encountered any obstacles or challenges along the way? Whatever your current status may be, now’s the perfect time to make a fresh...

You're ready to write your memoir. But how long will it take to finish your first draft? The answer to this question depends on a few factors. 

First, a couple of questions and some quick math.

How long will your book be?

Are you writing a full-length book or just a...

Fall is my favorite season for creativity. To capitalize on this seasonal surge in creativity, I’m hosting Write Your Own Life’s first NaMeWriMo 30-Day Memoir Writing Challenge. (Psst, the challenge starts on November 1st, so now's your chance to sign up!)

 NaMeWriMo is a...

What’s your favorite season? For me, it’s fall. The sun breaks the horizon later in the morning. It casts long shadows in the afternoon. The breeze carries a new scent—possibly the combination of drying leaves and crab apples.

As subtle as these natural changes in the...

This summer, my two daughters-in-law gave birth to beautiful baby girls. I experienced everything from the thrill of my sons and their new wives announcing that they were expecting, to watching them grow over the course of 40 weeks, and then finally, wondrously, welcoming two perfect girls...

June 30th marked the midyear mark for 2022, the end of the second quarter, and the perfect time to evaluate how you’re doing with your annual writing goals. At the beginning of the year, I took a risk and publicly shared my 2022 writing goal:

By the end of the second quarter of 2022, I will...

At the beginning of this year, I set a writing goal for myself: Finish writing the first draft of my memoir by the end of June. It’s a realistic goal if I maintain my writing routine. For me, this means writing first thing when I wake up. I set my Tomato timer on my phone for 30...

I’m a goal-setter. I can’t help myself. At the end of the year, I like to take time to reflect on the year I’ve just lived. What were the high points, low points, and points in between? How far did I get in achieving the goals I set for the year? For my writing especially, I...

When I moved to the city to start a new life after my divorce, I splurged and bought myself a special writing desk. It has the look of an old drafting table with a matching swivel stool. Both the desk and the stool can crank up and down depending on what height I want to position myself at or if...

My schedule was all set. I had my writing time blocked out for the week—30 minutes first thing every morning. The week started out great. Monday I woke up early and put in an hour-and-a-half of writing, which basically pushed me ahead of my writing schedule for the week. Good thing, because...

I love the idea of going away to a cabin in the mountains or a cottage on a lake or a beach house by the ocean to write. But let’s be real—how many of us actually get to do this?

In all the years I’ve been writing, I have only sequestered myself in a cabin to write by myself...

Everyone who embarks on a journey to write their memoir inevitably hits a wall. You have a dream of telling a slice of your life story, but you meet resistance—a too-full calendar, kids who need your full-time attention, a day-job that saps your energy and leaves you too tired to...