Melissa Wiley

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

through curiosity can reveal people to themselves. But formal education largely remains a vocational enterprise in which, Sir Ken argues, we are being steered away from the things we love “on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that.” Love has been rationalized out of the system of education, but it is central to the deeply personal an

Certain productive obsessions are bound to thread their way through your life, appearing here as a theme in the novel you write, there as the destination for a family vacation, and somewhere else as membership in a group or as an impulsive purchase.

You are agreeing to bleed for your art on days when your ideas torture you. Do not nod and agree to risk your equanimity and to live tumultuously unless you mean it. Maybe you didn’t quite understand what was being asked of you when, previously, you casually agreed that you were willing to take some risks for the sake of your writing. I hope that t

Sometimes the source of frustration is external; sometimes it’s internal. The specifics change, but there will always be something.

I bet you wish there was a magic wand to fix things for you...

"Magic is using energy to intentionally

transform and affect outcomes."

I learned this from an author I support on Patreon (Rachael Herron) and then

In fact, what is there to support not getting on with your day? Logic, the world, your partner and family all cry out for you to break your vow to write. It only takes a moment to assure yourself that your vow to write for, say, twenty minutes, is ridiculous. Probably you will arrive at this critical juncture every single day. Do not deceive yourse

You do not want to go too long without a productive obsession in place, since that will mean that you won’t really be thinking.