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The Irrepressible Writer: Discovering Light and Shadow By Carol Coven Grannick It’s been almost a year since I realized that I wanted to spend more of my time focused on writing than on the hope for publication (and “bouncing back” from the reality of The Black Hole of rejections). That wouldn’t mean I’d stop submitting or stop hoping. Continue reading Discovering Light and Shadow By Carol Coven Grannick This Is Just To Say… In the spring issue of our PRAIRIE WIND, I wrote about how it felt to face the possibility that my children’s work might never find a traditional publisher. I made it clear that I wasn’t giving up the longing to have my work out in the world, but that Continue reading The (Sometimes) Hard Work of Joy By Carol Coven Grannick If you believe that resilience is necessary to a committed, persistent, nourishing writing life, read on. If you believe that an optimistic and positive attitude is an always-necessary component of resilience and writing productivity, and have no interest in thinking otherwise, stop here. This column is about the discouragement that freed me. Maybe this Continue reading How Giving Up Hope of Publication Freed Me By Carol Coven Grannick I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions, and also not big on setting huge lofty goals. I like tiny steps and constant renewal. So I’d like to share a resource that will refresh and renew your writing life, if or when it needs the input. In 1934, Dorothea Brande had the brains Continue reading Never Too Late By Carol Coven Grannick When Dorothy asks Scarecrow in the movie version of The Wizard of Oz which direction to head in order to get to the Wizard, Scarecrow points in both directions. He doesn’t know which way to turn because he doesn’t have a brain. That’s how I sometimes feel with critique advice. I don’t Continue reading If I Only Had a Brain By Carol Coven Grannick In Dennis Palumbo’s classic book on the emotional life of the writer, Writing From the Inside Out, the writer/psychologist suggests that the ebb and flow of positive and negative emotions in the writer’s journey is normal. This is perhaps the most important “take-away” not only from Palumbo’s work, but from any journey of Continue reading Ebb and Flow By Carol Grannick Research continues to pour in on the benefits of various positive emotions on the brain’s creative capacities. Indeed, it would be difficult to argue against the practice of learning and strengthening the skills of positivity. Why, then, do so many of us wait until we’re feeling badly before we think about doing the hard work Continue reading It’s Positively Worth It By Carol Coven Grannick My violin-playing son probably heard the old joke about how you get to Carnegie Hall hundreds of times from the time he was three and a half, yet he didn’t even comprehend the reality of what the answer “Practice, practice, practice!” meant. If the same is not true for everything in life, it is Continue reading You Know How to Get to Carnegie Hall, Right? By Carol Coven Grannick It’s not just the negative self-talk that wastes our writing time. It’s the negative self-talk over and over. And over. Ruminating is a common, but unhappy and unproductive, activity. And the desire to “just say no” and switch it off can be unsuccessful. In fact, yelling at rumination to stop often kicks in a bigger Continue reading Ruminating Writer By Carol Coven Grannick I usually know when I’m on the wrong track with something. For me, “The Wrong Track” (TWT) has a few recognizable characteristics: I can’t do what I am trying to do, or any progress feels like pulling teeth. Continue reading The Journey to “Flow” 
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