It was 1922, and a 23-year-old Ernest Hemingway had just experienced one of the most devastating blows to his writing career.

A blow so devastating that he did not think he could ever write fiction again.

In fact, he seriously considered giving up on his dreams of becoming a famous novelist.

But eventually something within him drove him back to his typewriter.

He kept writing.

Four years later, he had completed The Sun Also Rises, and over thirty years later, he had won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Are there obstacles, interruptions, and distractions threatening to sabotage your writing goals in the New Year? Here’s what Hemingway can teach us about remaining dedicated to our craft even when life seems set on undermining our plans. [Read more…]

Have you ever started writing a story or a blog post and felt like it wasn’t turning out the way you had envisioned it in your head?

The words aren’t flowing quite the way you would like. Yet, you spent so much time working on it, that you decide to hit publish.

And your audience loves it.

In fact, they love it even more than anything else you have written. They demand more of the same.

What are you to do? Is your writing really as bad as you think?

Something similar happened to Arthur Conan Doyle. [Read more…]