Written

Year after year, knock-back after knock-back, he kept trying to convince reluctant journalists to run with his stories. These ideas are so bad, he must have thought, I can’t even pay someone to write about them. But instead of giving up, he changed tack. He commissioned himself. He set about writing the stories that nobody else wanted. Fully expect

Good things don’t come to those who wait, they come to those who do. To those who put things out into the world and are open to experimentation. So, whatever it is that you do, keep doing it. Whatever it is you create, keep creating it. Keep learning, keep experimenting, keep adapting, keep going. Because in the end, that’s the only thing we know f

There are two approaches for this.12 1.Starter step. This will be something very small that gets you going, such as opening your notebook or naming a document. It’s not necessarily about doing any writing – yet. It will develop into a writing habit, but by keeping the first step small you’ll be able to begin. 2.Scaling back. This approach gets you

Key to the success of Ashworth’s approach was that she focussed on the process of writing, not the outcome. The dailiness of that practice, she said, ‘lowers the stakes and allows you to be who you are each day’.

‘To effectively practice a skill without a teacher,’ writes Ericsson, ‘it helps to keep in mind three Fs: Focus. Feedback. Fix it. Break the skill down into components that you can do repeatedly and analyze effectively, determine your weaknesses, and figure out ways to address them.’20 Practising

the most successful creatives aren’t necessarily more gifted than their less successful peers. Rather, they produce more, which improves their overall chances of having a hit.

Specific Vague goals lead to vague outcomes. Getting specific helps define what you need to do to accomplish your desired endpoint. Start by being clear about what you want to achieve. Don’t say: ‘I must write more.’ Instead define what you mean by ‘writing’. Is it word-on-page drafting, or time with your project to read, research and plan? And wha

Rather than discovering that resilient individuals were possessed of extraordinary talents and skills, the evidence showed that resilience is common. Masten’s thesis is a simple one: ‘Resilience arises from “ordinary magic” and it is possible to understand where it comes from and how to foster it.’

At the most basic level there’s ‘naïve’ practice – literally just showing up and doing the activity again and again.

Here are five ideas that might trigger some insights for you. 1.Do you write better/worse on certain days of the week or times of the day? 2.When you find writing ‘hard’, what makes it hard? 3.When you’ve had a ‘good’ session, what made it good? 4.Are there days when your inner critic is particularly vocal? What is it saying? 5.If you get distracte