Blog Posts
How to Live Your Summer Life All Year Long
By Hillary Rettig |
Summer is a time for play, but what does your play tell you about the life you'd really like to be living? Many of us, during the summer: Relax Get more athletic Get more sensual (Shakespeare didn't write A Midwinter Night's Dream, after all!) Interact more with nature, and ...
Writer’s Block is Always Caused and Curable
By Hillary Rettig |
This essay by Fairfield University professor Elizabeth Boquet on how her writing productivity suffered when she switched from teaching to administration is a perfect illustration of the principles that: 1) procrastination/writers block/underproductivity are always caused (versus being some kind of intrinsic moral flaw like "laziness" or "lack of discipline"); 2) ...
Terre Roche: Happiness Comes From Focusing on the Song, Not the Success
By Hillary Rettig |
Terre Roche and her sisters were substantially more than a flash in the rock ‘n roll pan in the late 1970’s. Their debut album, The Roches, was number one on the New York Times list for the year 1979. But as she describes in this moving article, massive critical ...
In Defense of Self-Help Books
By Hillary Rettig |
I'm totally loving this Psychology Today post by Deborah Hill Cone on how it's snobbish to put down self-help literature: I will come clean. At my grimmest moments I would turn again and again to books which helped change my perspective and get “another way of thinking about life” although ...
New Parenthood Can Lead to Situational Perfectionism
By Hillary Rettig |
A new parent writes to syndicated advice columnist Carolyn Hax about how stressful it can be: The "stressed parent" images were too stressing, so here's a beautiful flower instead. I’m a new mom of a pretty but challenging 6-month-old boy. I am a naturally decisive person; however, the anxiety I’m ...
Harry Potter and the Boggart Perfectionism
By Hillary Rettig |
Harry Potter fans recall boggarts as creatures who live in dark household spaces like cupboards and closets and who, when you encounter one, take on the appearance of whatever it is you are most afraid of. In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, there's a great scene where Professor ...
I Wish Hilary Mantel Were My Sister II: Manuscript Coherence and Polish Come Late in the Writing Process!
By Hillary Rettig |
As if Hilary Mantel's wise words on memoir weren't enough, she also has something great to say about the writing process itself. In answer to the question, "What’s the best thing about writing a book?" she replies: The moment, at about the three-quarter point, where you see your way right ...
I Wish Hilary Mantel Were My Sister I: Memoir Isn’t Easy
By Hillary Rettig |
Honestly, I wish Hilary Mantel were my sister. Despite egregiously spelling her name with only one "l", she is one cool writer. In a New York Times interview she demolishes the naive view that memoir writing is easy: Memoir’s not an easy form. It’s not for beginners, which is unfortunate, ...
