One of the hardest lessons I've learned as a writer is that not all inactivity is procrastination. There are three distinct states in the creative process: - Working: You're actively writing, editing, outlining, recording, or otherwise moving the project forward. - Fermenting: You've reached a point where more effort won't improve the work. The manuscript needs distance. It needs time to settle. Your subconscious is still processing it even though you're not touching it. - Avoiding: The project is ready for your attention, but you're finding reasons not to engage with it. Suddenly, every other project seems more interesting. New ideas appear. Side quests multiply. The challenge is that fermenting and avoiding can look identical from the outside. In both cases, you're not working on the project. The difference is how the project feels. When a manuscript is still fermenting, returning to it feels muddy. You can't quite see what needs to change. When fermentation is complete, something shifts. The project starts quietly asking for your attention. You begin to sense what needs to be done, but the work itself may feel difficult, tedious, or uncomfortable. That's often the moment writers mistake avoidance for inspiration and run off to a shiny new project. I've also learned that productive procrastination has value. While one project is fermenting, I might write an essay, critique another author's work, record an audiobook chapter, or work on a lesson for the Guild. Those activities keep me engaged with the craft without forcing a manuscript before it's ready. The key is making sure productive procrastination remains productive and doesn't become a permanent refuge from finishing. Sometimes the most important question isn't: "What do I feel like working on?" It's: "Which project is actually asking for me right now?"

When I work with Claude to help me write, I've developed a voice instruction so there's less line editing to do later: "Master Sergreant Reverend E.B. White with a slightly dark sense of humor, writing a paper for my high school English teacher, Mrs. Cox who is strict about punctuation and founding member of PETOP (People for the Ethical Treatment Of Participles) and she is HIGHLY allergic to "AI-isms" and doesn't carry and epi-pen." It took a lot of practice to find this as a description of my natural writing voice. What might yours be?

I've officially finished production on my first audiobook! It's available on YouTube. It's a short book, but packs a lot in. My marketing strategy with this one is to release it for free on YouTube, and Substack, and soon I'll release the chapters separately, too. I figure that way I can catch readers and listeners who like short-form and/or long-form audio, and maybe entice them to get a copy on Amazon or Audible. Mostly, I'm hoping this will get me booked on more podcasts and that will lead to speaking engagement. That's the vision. https://youtu.be/CxG9cv8I-ig

One of the things I’ve been noticing while revising my latest essay is how often stronger writing comes from removing polish instead of adding it. Early drafts tend to explain themselves too much. They reach for “writerly” language. They summarize emotions the scene already earned. For example: BEFORE:“The plan had started simply enough.” AFTER:“We had a simple plan.” The second one sounds more like an actual human being sitting across from you with a cup of coffee telling you a story. Another: BEFORE:“By the time we got back on the road toward Hopewell, my bladder had begun lodging formal complaints.” AFTER:“By the time we got back on the road toward Hopewell, my bladder was mounting a revolution.” The revision is less technically elegant, but more alive. More movement. More voice. Another: BEFORE:“I needed something older that had a deeper story to tell.” AFTER:“I needed a church with scar tissue.” That’s the difference between abstraction and image. And another: BEFORE:“Despite my best efforts, a quiet ‘WTF’ slipped out.” AFTER:“A quiet ‘WTF’ slipped out.” The first version explains. The second trusts the reader. That’s a huge shift in writing. A lot of improving prose is learning when to stop cushioning every sentence. I think many writers assume strong prose comes from stacking intelligence onto the page. But often it comes from removing insulation and letting the sentence carry its own weight. Sometimes cleaner writing is not more sophisticated. Sometimes it just sounds more true.

There’s an old practice among some Japanese monks where they would write a poem and then release it into a river, letting the current carry it away. Not because the poem had no value, but because attachment can become a cage. The act of writing was the living thing. The page was only ever a leaf floating downstream. Over the years, I’ve lost stories to crashed computers, floods, divorce, hard drives, moves, and the strange erosion of time. Entire worlds vanished. Characters gone. Thousands upon thousands of words disappeared into the fog. But I’m still a writer. A tree does not stop being a tree because a storm tears off a branch. The story is not always the point. Sometimes the writing itself is the point. The practice. The attention. The shaping of thought into language. The quiet act of returning to the desk again and again, even after loss. If you lost a project recently, grieve it. Seriously. But don’t mistake a lost manuscript for a lost voice. Those are not the same thing.