Reflect on your writing

I have two twin pillars that have helped me shape my life closer to what I want it to be and make my writing happen. One is Jinny Ditzler's book, Your Best Year Yet; the other is The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. Between them, they help me straddle that eternal creative conundrum of product versus process, setting out to achieve something and finish something versus allowing space to play and make mistakes. Both have helped me see the value of reflecting. These are the questions I use to think about my writing practice, for your own use. I've given my own answers beneath each one.

Celebrate your writing

Thousands of NaNoWriMo writers have just slumped over their laptops, exhausted and triumphant after a month-long novel-writing sprint. (And whether or not you "won", you should feel triumphant if you wrote significantly more than usual.) It's time for all NaNoWriMo writers to celebrate and for all writers to remember the value of celebrating. So here's why celebrating matters and some ideas of what to do, and then on Wednesday the wonders of how to make a book thing out of your freshly finished writing.