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Posts Tagged ‘practice’

The Path to Good

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 13, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The path to good runs through bad, and that goes for art forms we don’t even consider art forms, like friendship, parenthood, and citizenship. But the only thing that gets us better is practice. — Hank Green

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Photo by Yusheng Deng on Unsplash

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Grounding the Reader

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on April 8, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Every writer has strengths and… not strengths. One of the areas I personally like to work on is grounding, which is where you invite readers into a scene and help them feel at home in your story. 

In this episode of the long-running podcast Writing Excuses, Erin Roberts, DongWon Song, and Mary Robinette Kowal focus on ways to do just that. 

Writing Excuses 21.09: Grounding The Reader

Grounding a reader starts in the very first lines of a story. Where are we? Who are we with? What kind of story are we in? Our hosts explore how emotion, context, and sensory detail work together to create immersion, and why action alone isn’t enough without an emotional lens.

It’s only 20 minutes long and includes a helpful writing exercise to get you going.

If you’ve realized that (for example) just being dropped into the middle of a gunfight wasn’t enough to engage your audience, or your reader said “I wasn’t quite sure where I was at first,” this advice could help!

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Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

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How to Improve

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , on January 5, 2026| Leave a Comment »

It’s a new year and a new opportunity to take a breath, reassess, and target new (or old!) goals. That doesn’t mean you have to join a gym or swear off every. single. one. of your favorite guilty pleasures or anything like that. That approach tends not to be sustainable.

(You may remember that I don’t really do resolutions, but I do like to take advantage of the January “fresh start effect” to reset… and to forgive myself when things don’t always go to plan🙂

That said, January is a good time to remember what you like, what you’d like to do, and to do more to get there.

If you’ve been working but feel you’re not making as much progress as you want, this piece might be useful:

How to practice effectively…for just about anything

This video focuses on physical tasks, but writing and many other tasks are also mind-body processes. And the idea of focused, targeted repetition with a concrete result in mind? 

That’s the kind of goal I can get behind. 

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Photo by Elodie AGODOR on Unsplash

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Everyday Magic

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Whether you want to draw, write, or some other creativity, this is pretty good advice.

The Artist Who Couldn’t Draw | The Kid Should See This

Roger didn’t like his drawings. He didn’t feel that he had any drawing talent. But then a girl named Zoe moved next door and handed him a magic black pen.

The lesson? Sometimes it helps to take things literally.

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Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

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Queen of Meh

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 8, 2021| Leave a Comment »

I’m bouncing from project to project again, doing some work work and some practice work. I’ve also started about half a dozen posts but nothing feels right, because none of them said what I was really thinking, which is that today I am the Queen of Meh.

This is not to say that things are not a-ok, I’d just prefer to be making more progress.

Mood: pretty groovy, thanks for asking.

Fine, let’s roll with it.

I did nothing amazing today but do things I did. The project I had the most fun with was practicing photo compositing. Here’s a chimera that is not very good but I like anyway: Behold, the Winged Buffabear!

Original photos by Steven Cordes and Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash,
daguerreotype overlay from Spoon Graphics

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I think I’ll try to follow this advice by Christine Carter, and my own, and aim low:

The 1-minute secret to forming a new habit

Here’s why we need to be willing to be bad: being good requires that our effort and our motivation be in proportion to each other. The harder something is for us to do, the more motivation we need to do that thing. And you might have noticed, but motivation isn’t something that we can always muster on command….

The goal, remember, is repetition, not high achievement. So let yourself be mediocre at whatever you’re trying to do, but be mediocre every day. 

— Christine Carter

That I can do!

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Look at all those minutes!
Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

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Coding My Way Out of a Corner

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 24, 2013| 1 Comment »

Some days I stand here at my desk trying to generate a creative thought (or even two!) and it doesn’t happen. If I can’t do the thing I set out to do I still try to do something, so on those days I look for alternatives to get my mind working. My latest filler project is a little Applescript (sorry Windows, I just don’t swing that way) that pops up a window with practice ideas for writing projects. Not what to write, but what to practice while writing.

Here’s the code with a sampling of my current list of practice topics. If this is your sort of thing, substitute your own practice topics as necessary:

set x to some item of {"*action*", "*all five senses*", "*catchy beginnings with a hint of the speculative*", "*characterization*", "*cliffhangers*", "*conflict*", "*distinctive dialog*", "*emotion*", "*grounding*", "*imagery*", "*immediacy*", "*openers*", "*scenes*", "*settings*", "*showing instead of telling*", "*smart science*", "*visual detail*", "*writing without 'was'*"}
set textToType to "Practice " & x & " in your story today."
set answer to the button returned of (display dialog textToType as string buttons {"Excellent idea, thanks!"} default button 1 with icon note)

So it’s code today, perhaps cake tomorrow. Chocolate. Triple tier. With Bailey’s icing:)

/unless that’s a lie

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