Three Actions You Can Take to Feel Happier as a Writer This Year

By Angelica Ribeiro, PhD

I’m sure many people wished you “Happy New Year.” But what does it mean when it comes to writing? In other words, what can you do to feel happier in your writing practice? To address this question, it’s essential to first define what happiness means.

According to Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of The How of Happiness and The Myths of Happiness, happiness is to be happy in and with our lives, meaning that you (a) experience more positive emotions than negative ones, (b) feel that your life is good and meaningful, and (c) are satisfied with the progress you are making toward your life goals.

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Why start a writing journal?

If you’re having trouble getting serious about writing in the new year after all the holiday time away, consider a writing journal. It’s an almost painless way to sneak back into writing and a longstanding writer’s tool to record and develop ideas, work out projects and plots, and save meaningful aphorisms and perfect overheard phrases. Whether you’ve kept a journal for decades, or have never started one, a journal not only can help you write more but also make your writing more effective.

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Allowing our writing creative limbo

Whenever I start a new piece of writing, despite many such starts, I’m often gripped by panic. I still look forward to capturing a new idea on the page, but I freeze. Thinking hard, I finally saw why: it’s the feeling of unknowing.

Whether I’ve scribbled a handful of notes in a frenzy of inspiration or actually made an outline, that same itchy, unsteady, slightly nauseous feeling pervades. Not exactly illness or a full-blown block, it’s more of a nervous disquiet I can only describe as “creative limbo.” Doesn’t matter how often I’ve felt it or many pieces I’ve started and completed. It rears up.

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Five chances to reset the terms of your book contract (Part 1)

If you published the first edition of your textbook ten or more years ago, you may find yourself occasionally muttering to yourself, “I wish I kew then what I know now.”

Why is that?

Historically, the publishers start the book contract negotiation game with all the cards…backs to you. You have one card…it’s face up. And it tells everybody, “I’m new at this but I’m excited. Just tell me where to sign.”

Publishers have generally been the gatekeeper to a published book. While this may be less true now, with self-publishing and Open Educational Resources (OER), the publishers still have the most established distribution channels self-publishers cannot begin to match.

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