time Archives - MUSE • Leslie Keenan

Time Management and Writing

Are your time issues blocking you from having success as a writer? A writing student came to me with a dilemma. She had a book contract, and the summer off to write it, and she was terrified that she wouldn’t be able to do it. She has struggled all her life with time. She procrastinates, gets focused on small details and neglects the bigger picture, and she hides out in research without writing. To top it off, she was intimidated by the sheer size of the project. Sure, she’d written…read more

6 Steps Professional Writers Use to Complete Their Books

Are you serious about getting your book done? It might be time to do as the professionals do and create a schedule. Many professional writers have a contract to finish their books, and therefore a real deadline with an outside source, and a schedule in place to meet that deadline. This is where beginning writers, or self-published authors, need some assistance. If you don’t yet have a contract, or if you are doing it yourself, how can you be sure you will actually get it done? If you are ready…read more

Using a Timeline to Get Your Book Done

Have you ever completed a writing session and thought, at this rate it will take me 10 years to finish this book? I see this all the time and it’s based on a fallacy. The fallacy is that each writing day is like another. The truth is, every day is different. Creativity is like that. Sometimes ideas just come, and flow right out onto the page effortlessly. You might end up with five pages. Other days, you can feel at a loss and struggle just to get a few paragraphs…read more

Vision Zero…Championing “Natural Time”

I kept hearing about yet another pedestrian death on the streets of SF. There have been 5 so far this year. Last year there were 21 pedestrian deaths. This is people dying because they don’t cross the street fast enough (a 6-year-old and an 86-year-old were among those killed last year), and in our culture getting people where they need to go (speed) is more important than human life. This is the one issue of linear vs. natural time that upsets me the most. (Watch my 3-minute YouTube explanation of…read more

“Groundhog Day” the movie: The “It’s a Wonderful Life” of Our Times

This is a piece I wrote several years ago, and I still feel the same way. What do you think? Can Groundhog Day, that little made-up holiday that distracts us from the long haul of winter, become as big as Christmas? Okay, maybe not, but I’m making the case that Groundhog Day , the movie, should become the It’s a Wonderful Life of this generation. I want families to gather round on Groundhog Day and watch this movie together, just like It’s a Wonderful Life has become the Christmas tradition….read more

Spring Forward?

The day we change the clocks – Spring Forward – is always the worst day of the year for me. Or rather the first day I have to be anywhere after we spring forward. Add in a 4 1/2 year old who is attending preschool, and you can magnify that by a factor of ten, which this morning included about three drop-down-to-the-floor, scream-and-cry jags. “I’m just tired Mama!” she finally shouted. Yes, I was too. I’m always shocked by how we can all expect to suddenly have our days…read more

Going Deep

From my End-of-Year Newsletter, 2009 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I want to revisit a topic I brought up back in July (“The Value of Doing Nothing”). It seems even more important and appropriate as we turn into winter, the fallow time of the year. The topic is this: the importance, no – more than that – the absolute, vital necessity of going deep in order to do our creative work. By going deep, I mean really having enough time to immerse yourself deeply in your work, or to discover what in fact the…read more

The Bucket List

From my Newsletter, Autumn 2009 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I was talking to my mother on the phone two weeks ago and she said, of going to the new Yankee Stadium, “That’s another thing off my bucket list!” That night, while giving the exercise of writing down ten book ideas to a new class, I thought, hmm, what if you had a book bucket list? If you are wondering what the heck buckets have to do with anything, a bucket list is a list of things you want to do before you die…read more

The Value of Doing Nothing

Posted by Leslie in Time, Writing

From my Newsletter, Late Summer 2009 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In our busy-busy; go-go culture, spending time idly, perhaps even staring into space, is not thought well of. In fact, if you went by what people say in the press, you’d think having some alone-time is highly suspect. When reporters couldn’t follow Obama at all times on the campaign trail, because, gasp, he wanted to have some moments alone, they didn’t understand why. And yet, for creativity to emerge, we need some down-time for it to formulate itself, or for us to access…read more

New Year’s Resolutions?

I hate new year’s resolutions. The new year is just an arbitrary date created by a linear calendar that happens to start in the dead of winter. And resolutions are usually just lists of things we think we “should” do but haven’t been able to. So a month, or even a few weeks, in you feel like a failure because you’ve not been able to do it now either. Instead of a new year, I like to focus on the fact that we get a brand new twenty-four hours each…read more