Attend any writer’s panel, conference, workshop, or class; read or listen to any interview, and you’ll hear the question: How do you make time to write? In a world with working(!), sleeping(!), family obligations(!), housework(!), health-sustaining activity(!), various relationships(!) and, heaven-forbid, other interests(!!), how do you make time to write?
Read More »Category: Personal
The Do Over Program
There are diminishing returns in receiving a formal education for creative writing. I have a BFA and an MFA, and consider the experience of earning the MFA to be the greatest regret of my adult life. It’s not that I didn’t learn all the skills I needed to learn: craft, analysis, criticism, cold reading, writing for a cold read. It’s that learning these skills, and perpetually reinforcing them, clutters the font from which the writing itself springs. For me, this eventually meant no more writing.
Read More »It’s Backlog, B*tch
Sometime in late 2021, alongside many unknown others, I started to wake up from my “post”-COVID haze, took stock of my life, and thought to myself, “How did I end up with this many video games?” Hundreds of them, representing thousands of hours of playtime, which were apparently invisible to me until they reached a mass so critical, it became embarrassing. This is my humble backlog post.
Read More »Unnecessary Manifesto
I started to think I might never write again. Why would I? Around 2018, I noticed it becoming a struggle. I didn’t want to anymore. I went to workshops to make myself externally accountable, and I set aside time to write, and I made it happen (sometimes). But the flow state was hard to achieve. My mind almost never cleared enough to just let the words through.
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Nicole Connolly Writes 