The last time I wrote a post with this title, I wrote that women need a stay-at-home husband. And clearly, I was wrong, because later research showed that women who are breadwinners with stay-at-home husbands are headed for divorce.
You know how Marie Kondo tells you to go through your closet and throw out all your clothes because you want to start a new part of life? I did that with my website. If you’re the impetuous type, you throw out your clothes and buy new ones later. I did that, too.
If you do not stay home with kids, you’ll be annoyed to hear all the benefits of watching kids, because people don’t really care about what benefits could be gained. We care about what we could lose. This is true for everyone: Consumers, liars, straight-A students. Working moms.
The #MeToo movement has focused on workplace harassment, and I keep thinking: when will #MeToo include domestic violence? I try to imagine what it will look like so I can help make it come faster. Read more
Unlimited editing for a full year! Plus weekly videos and emails from me and many opportunities to receive feedback from the whole group. The course is $1550.
Writers work best with an external deadline. We don’t realize it, but our definition of a successful writer means someone has attained external deadlines: Journalists have an editor, authors have a publication date, comedy writers have a showtime, publicists have a boss.
If you know you have something to say, but you have a hard time getting yourself to write on a regular schedule, this course is for you. Think of it as buying the external deadline so you can get started.
What does that include? In addition to unlimited editing for a year, check this out:
Self-discipline to write regularly and the self-confidence that follows. Knowing you are writing well is one of the best ways to get yourself to write. And we’ll reach that point by working together.
When I started writing, it was sporadic. I didn’t like that I didn’t know if what I was writing was good or bad. I thought it might be good. But I didn’t trust myself. I wanted outside affirmation.
I turned a corner when I realized that receiving consistent feedback from a seasoned writer made my own writing better and better each week. And the experience made me want to write regularly so I could get feedback: no writing meant no feedback for that week.
Insight into the format that showcases your particular talent. I ended up teaching writing at Harvard, Brown, and the University of Paris. Based on the curriculum I developed, I can help you discover the format of writing that is most true to you: fiction, nonfiction, long-form journalism, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, essay, memoir, op-ed. You might be surprised to discover that you’re naturally talented in a format you haven’t tried.
Finding your best format will lead to you finding your hidden ability to write regularly about what matters to you.
One-on-one coaching to create your own version of the writer’s life. We’ll have an ongoing relationship the whole year via email and phone. I’ll suggests topics, tactics, routines, and other solutions I’ve developed to overcome challenges in my own writing life.
A measurable, achievable goal that will make you feel accomplished. Once you’re writing on a regular basis, I’ll make sure your writing adds up to something. I’m very goal oriented, and I didn’t feel like a real writer until I had a goal for my writing. This might be true for you, too.
The people I’ve been working with for the past four years have had big success:
- One person has seen her blog traffic increase 20% every month for two years.
- Two people got book deals for nonfiction books.
- One person changed from writing a blog to writing a memoir, and that switch enabled her to write almost every day for a year.
- One person—who had never written anything before I worked with her—published a book of short essays that I keep on my nightstand. It reminds me what a joy it is to work with writers.
I know it will change your life, because everyone I’ve worked with in this capacity has accomplished something meaningful to them and surprising to both of us.
No one succeeds alone, in anything. I’ll be your team for your writing.
Parental Advisory: Earning all the money and taking care of the kids by yourself at the same time is hell. And only crazy people do it. Really. Less than 1% of white college-educated women raise kids alone. That statistic makes sense to me. Because 2% of white college-educated women get divorced. All these statistics come from the Bureau of Labor. Most of the women in this demographic get remarried. I am convinced that the women who do not remarry and actually do the whole child-rearing thing alone all have autism. Read more
Porcelain Pencils by Katharine Morling
The FBI just announced a sting operation that caught 50 rich and famous parents paying millions of dollars to bribe and cheat to get their under-qualified kids into top colleges (and, mysteriously, some not-top colleges). Last year a magnet school in Louisiana, which had been celebrated for getting poor minority students into top schools year after year, admitted to lying and cheating to get the kids in. Read more
I check the farmer’s blog obsessively for any updates, which takes a lot of energy partially because he never writes on it but mostly because I have to work really hard at all the mental gymnastics I use to justify to myself what I’m even doing on there in the first place. Read more
I am on a sad-movie-watching binge. It started a few weeks ago. Wait. No. It probably started when I was in third grade and there was no grownup home until 8pm, so after school I went to the movie theater every day for a week to watch Wilbur lose Charlotte and learn to fend for himself. Read more
When I was looking at apartments I didn’t notice the incredibly noisy construction right outside our windows. I attribute this oversight to the same phenomena that happens in the video where you count basketball passes – if you have never seen the video stop everything and go watch it. Read more