Nancy Christie's Blog, page 2

Laura Gaddis: In Search of the Humanness of Stories

Laura Gaddis and I have a few things in common.

We share the same publisher, Unsolicited Press. We both live in Ohio—she’s in Oxford and I’m in Austintown. And we both write fiction and nonfiction.

But when it comes to her latest book, Mosaic, I freely admit that her ability to share her experiences with traumatic personal events—in her case, multiple miscarriages, grief, and motherhood, outstrips mine. I’m not sure I could have taken those life events and turned them into such a heartbreaking y...

Thoughts on writing and life for February 2025

Why libraries are so important in our communities

This is an edited excerpt from my February 2025 newsletter, The Writing Life. (Subscribe here.)

You can also listen to it on my Living the Writing Life podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

Since this is Library Lovers Month, I want to talk about the important role libraries play in our communities. But first a little backstory.

When I was a child, I loved going to the library. Fortunately, there was one not too far from my home on the west...

Happy Birthday To Me!

Photo by Stephen Wheeler on Unsplash

While I am not averse to going out for dinner and having a cake with lots of icing for my birthday, there’s really not much else I need.

But I am taking this opportunity to ask for gifts—just not for me.

I am fortunate to have access to whatever books I want from my local library and bookstores. But not everyone has that privilege—and I do consider it a privilege to be able to get whatever books I want whenever I want them, and to have the time to read them.

...

31 Days of Rut-Busting Tips For Writers for 2025—Day 31

Make Your Commitment.

This is easy—and hard. It’s easy to say you are committed to your writing.

It’s not so easy to match action to words, commit to giving your writing the time and attention it deserves.

Each day, you must choose to make writing an important part of your life, regardless of its income-producing potential. It isn’t being published that makes you a writer.

You are a writer as long as you write.

Otherwise, you are just talking about being a writer, dreaming of being a writer, pla...

31 Days of Rut-Busting Tips For Writers for 2025—Day 30

Ignite Your Creativity.

You want to write. You have to write.

There is a burning deep inside of you that demands that you write.

Those are the wonderful days when you can’t wait to get to the computer or paper, when the hours fly by while you are caught up in what you are writing.

And then there are the other times, the times when you hit an inspirational dry spell.

You’re ready to write, you have time to write, but you are suffering from an internal blockage I refer to as “creative constipation...

31 Days of Rut-Busting Tips For Writers for 2025—Day 29

Develop Your Curiosity.

If you’ve ever watched children play, you know how integral curiosity is to them.

The inevitable question—Why?—is part of every conversation as is their insatiable need to take things apart and see how they work.

Writing requires that level of curiosity. We have to be open to the world, to people, to events and circumstances, and see what we can learn from them.

Otherwise, we are just writing the same thing over and over again: the same characters, the same situations, th...

31 Days of Rut-Busting Tips For Writers for 2025—Day 28

Find Your Courage.

Writing can be a scary process. You are putting your words out there to be judged, and sometimes it can be hard to take the critiques.

It can also be scary if there is something you want to explore—an event from your past, for example—but you aren’t sure if you have the strength to go down into that dark place.

And then there is the fear that surfaces when you try something new.

Maybe you’ve had a modest amount of success writing nonfiction books but now you want to try your h...

31 Days of Rut-Busting Tips For Writers for 2025—Day 27

Build Your Confidence.

Sometimes, all the gods are with us, the muses are lined up on either side of our desk, no one is bothering us—in short, conditions are perfect for writing.

And then it starts: our internal gremlin whispers: “You’ll never be a writer. Who do you think you are— another Shakespeare? JK Rowling? Stephen King?”

This is the evil spirit of self-doubt.

Part of what can trigger this is your actual writing process, beginning with second-guessing the quality of what you’re writing. ...

31 Days of Rut-Busting Tips For Writers for 2025—Day 26

Know Your Value.

Your writing ability has a value, both intrinsically and commercially.

Whether you write books or marketing copy, poetry, short stories or essays, your words can be a source of financial compensation as well as a method of building your writing brand.

But this requires you to take off your writing hat and put on your bookkeeper bonnet.

If you are investing time and money in your writing career, make sure that your decisions have a solid financial basis. Writing for corporate cli...

31 Days of Rut-Busting Tips For Writers for 2025—Day 25

Be Accessible.

I interview a lot of writers, authors and industry professionals on my blogs and podcast.

And nothing frustrates me more than when I search for specific people online and find either they don’t have a presence at all or what they have doesn’t offer any mode of contact.

Unless you are emulating Greta Garbo’s “I want to be alone” attitude from the movie Grand Hotel, you need to be accessible. Reachable. Available.

Now I’m not advocating posting your home address for all the world to...