Sarah's Blog

I just flew back home on Monday after 16 days with my family in Cleveland. My mother was in the hospital with heart failure, two of my sisters were in the process of moving, and my two-year-old niece had yet to begin daycare (and then came home with croup when she did).

Being home — or returning to a place I used to call home — is weird. Maybe you’ve experienced something like this, too. Being here makes my life feel like it has a split end…

Just a quick update — no Write Now podcast and a late (and brief) newsletter this week, as my mom is in the hospital. I flew to Cleveland early Sunday morning and it’s been chaos ever since.

What’s up there, in your brain, influencing you, that you don’t even remember storing? What are you curating (consciously or unconsciously) in your mind-museum, and how does it come out in your creative work?

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I’m feeling a little lost and afraid at the prospect of not having a daily dose of The Artist’s Way to prompt, guide, coach, encourage, and heal me every day. I’m afraid to stop making steady forward progress, or worse, relapse, backtrack, or lose my progress altogether.

What do you want out of 2022? I mean, aside from an end to the pandemic, world hunger, violence, etc. Those are all huge systemic and infrastructural problems that we as individual humans can’t control or solve on our own. What do you actually want, for yourself, that is within your control?

My morning began, as all mornings do, in darkness. I won’t use this opportunity to describe the beautiful neon-rose-and-gold sunrise that slowly followed as I sipped my coffee, because that’s not the point right now. The point is that we’re starting a new year, and I think that things are dark — or at the very least, seem dark — for many of us.

Dear Creators, I’m going to keep it short this week, because I think a lot of us are busy, overwhelmed, tired, and stressed. Basically, thank you. I am grateful for you — for opening these emails, for listening to Write Now podcast episodes, for checking out Girl In...

If you ask the wrong questions, you’ll get the wrong answers. What questions are you asking yourself as a writer and creator?

I like honesty. I like realness. I like truth. I’m drawn to it, I savor it, and I generally don’t have time for anything else. And yet sometimes, when the world boils down around me and it’s just me alone with my thoughts, I find myself neck-deep in… let’s call it crap.

Remember that one time in January 2015 when I launched a new podcast? It was called Write Now with Sarah Werner and its mission was “to give writers the time, energy, and courage you needed to pursue your passion and write every day”. Since then, a lot has changed.

Do you ever find yourself sitting on the couch in some uncomfortable position, scrolling through Instagram or reading painful news articles or marathoning something on YouTube or Netflix, and you realize that you’ve had to use the bathroom for the last 45 minutes, but your legs are asleep, and if you get up from the couch, then the realization of all of the time you’ve just spent will come crashing back down upon you like a deadly tidal wave of guilt and self-loathing?

I feel like all of my best realizations come when I’m talking things out with a good friend, preferably over coffee, and I’d like to share one of them with you today. I was having a heart-to-heart via Zoom with my friend Rebecca last week, during which I mentioned an...

I started working my way through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron this August as a way to enrich my journaling experience.  It’s a book I had read post-college and dismissed for a number of reasons — I believed I already knew everything she was saying, it was just...

I was talking with a group of writers last week when someone said that they had let themselves down — they had missed a deadline on a story, failed to show up for their Monday and Thursday writing sessions, and had thus far written zero (0) words for NaNoWriMo. I...

Today is the first day of November, a.k.a. the starting date of NaNoWriMo! Wheee! What is NaNoWriMo, you ask? NaNoWriMo is a yearly challenge where you basically write a 50,000-word novel over the month of November. It comes out to writing about 1,700 words per day,...

Have you heard of the sunk cost fallacy?  A sunk cost is the concept of “​​a sum paid in the past that is no longer relevant to decisions about the future” (definition via Wikipedia), or, more simply put, the money we’ve poured into something and cannot get back. The...

My 19-year-old cat Midori, like many cats, loves to scratch her claws on cardboard.  I didn’t know this when I first got a cat, but unlike dogs, cats shed the outer layer of their claws so that they stay perennially sharp. (The first time I found one of Midori’s...

A short post this week, yet still a lot of creativity-related content for you, in the form of two videos.The first is my interview with #1 New York Times bestselling author David Sheff, whose memoir Beautiful Boy was recently adapted into a movie starring Steve...

How are you with reward systems? Are you the type of writer who says things like: “Okay, just 257 more words, and then I get to eat this piece of cake!” Or are you more like me, telling yourself that: “Maybe if I eat this piece of cake now, it will fuel and/or inspire...

Usually, when we choose to do something, it’s for a very specific reason. Sometimes the reason is obvious, and sometimes it’s buried deep within our subconscious, but there’s almost always a reason — often two or more. I complete my “necessary” business tasks each day...

Is knitting still cool? Was it ever cool? Is “cool” still the right word to use for things that are, in other words, rad as heck? Huh. It’s… probably not a good sign if I’m diving into tangents in the opening line of my newsletter, is it?  Anyway, I’ve been knitting....

I hope you had the chance to watch my interview with New York Times bestselling author Anne Lamott this summer. (And if not, here’s a replay link!) I am excited to announce that I am partnering once again with Strengthening The Heartland to bring you another interview...

Last week, I re-launched both my I Am A Writer and Seriously Successful Podcasters Facebook communities. I’d neglected them for a LONG TIME (yikes), and decided to take action and either revamp them or shut them down.  … I’d continue with this story, but, uh, you...

I’ve noticed I have a LOT of scarcity when it comes to time. Maybe you do, too. Time is one of the few things in life I feel I don’t have control over — and when I keep an eye on the clock, counting down the minutes that remain for me to work on a project, read a book...

I just returned from a week-long writing retreat with my sister, Bec, and wow, was it amazing.  I’ve come a long way since my disastrous 2015 retreat experience, and I strive to make each year’s retreat a little better, more productive, and (paradoxically) more...

I never intended this to be a 3-part series, yet here we are: part 3 of the list of all the books I’ve read so far in 2021. Whew! Ready? The Witch Elm by Tana French — This was the first mystery I’d ever read by Tana French, and holy heck was it powerful. I was glued...

In another life, I would have liked to have been a librarian. Or… whatever you’d call a professional book pusher. But as Kazuo Ishiguro said, “There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.” And in this one, I’m reading a lot of books. 😀 I...

My goal this year (and every year) is to read 52 books — essentially, a book a week. Many years, I don’t make it, largely because I de-prioritize reading for one reason or another. But this year, since I allowed myself to prioritize reading every day, I’m going to hit...

Writing is a paradox. It’s always been a paradox for me — a truth-filled thing that somehow contradicts itself at every turn.  Writing is simultaneously hard work and deep joy, hobby and profession, something I do to make money and something I do to relax and unwind....

I have a confession for you this week: I’ve been letting fear get the better of me for the last several months. You may have noticed that all of my Write Now podcast episodes since May 2021 have been interviews with other (amazing and brilliant!) writers and creators,...

I haven't been feeling great lately, and some kind of Sickness (hopefully not Covid) has descended onto me and completely wiped out my energy. I told a friend earlier that if I had a traditional job, I would be calling off sick. I almost said "if I had a REAL job,"...