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It was always so hard to get everyone in the same place at the same time. This happy hour had been on the books for months. It was moved four times—once because torrential rain flooded the subways, once because Callie’s roommate was out of town and she had the rare chance to have the couch…

Review: The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Leigh Bardugo is a powerhouse author that I somehow just…missed all these years. Don’t ask me what I was doing when everyone else was diving into the Grishaverse because I simply don’t know. And I still haven’t read those books! Or watched any of the adaptations! I’ve only read Ninth House (love) and now…

Mimi

When a loved one is diagnosed with dementia, you go searching for answers. Or at least I did. There’s all these tips online and from ‘helpful’ people about how to ‘deal with’ them. The prevailing one, I’ve found, is much like improv—just ‘yes and’ them and you’ll avoid any potential meltdowns. When I read that,…

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So what do I do? What do we do? How do we move forward when we are tired and afraid? What do we do when the voice in our head is yelling that WE ARE NEVER GONNA MAKE IT? How do we drag ourselves through the muck when our brain is telling us youaredumbandyouwillneverfinishandnoonecaresanditistimeyoustop?

Well, the first thing we do is take our brain out and put it in a drawer. Stick it somewhere and let it tantrum until it wears itself out. You may still hear the brain and all the shitty things it is saying to you, but it will be muffled, and just the fact that it is not in your head anymore will make things seem clearer. And then you just do it. You dig in and write it. You use your body. You lean over the computer and stretch and pace. You write and then cook something and write some more. You put your hand on your heart and feel it beating and decide if what you wrote feels true. You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing. That is what I know. Writing the book is about writing the book.

Amy Poehler, Yes Please

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Here’s the bottom line – and not a lot of authors will be brave enough to speak their truth this way, but we’re just gonna say it: writing a book is a tiny bit terrifying. It threatens to expose you as the fraud that you are, but instead of running and hiding from the shame of it, you just have to keep staring into the mirror. It’s incredibly unnatural. You start out with an idea you like. You write that idea down. You let it sit for five days, and when you come back to it, the words have rearranged themselves on the page. Now it’s shape-shifted into the dumbest idea you’ve ever seen. So you try to fix it. And you just keep fixing it until you go computer-blind, all the joy is drained from your soul, and you no longer know what words mean. Then it’s on to chapter 2!

Karen Kilgariff & Georgia Hardstark, Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered