One thing I have trouble tolerating is a jaded writer. I find evidence of them in open Facebook groups and they drive me away in about .5 seconds.

Why do I flee? Because I don’t want what they are having, to paraphrase the famous line from When Harry Met Sally.

These are writers who have turned over their idealism to cynicism and let it wear them down. They have let what they perceive as the system define them and determine their attitudes and actions.

The solution to this reminds me of a quote that my friend and mentor Jane Friedman lives by. The quote is by Joseph Campbell who wrote The Hero’s Journey and many other very wise books.

“Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes?”

This is a good question for writers to answer on a daily basis, so no wonder that Jane has made it her mantra.

It’s all too easy to be cynical. I would even go so far to say that it’s lazy. But it takes energy and determination to want to express yourself and to steer your self-expression in ways that positively impact the world.

How many times a day do you experience someone saying something cynical on Facebook or Twitter or somewhere else?

You know what I suggest?

I suggest you unfriend them or unfollow them and get back on your creative quest.

Recognize that cynics and whiners and blamers are never going to do you or your writing career any good.

Also, your time is valuable and your energy is precious. So do not waste even one second with negative, draining people.

And PS, it’s not your job to fix them or make them feel better, either. That’s their job. Let them do it.

I can tell you right now that those people are not going to be able to use the system for human purposes. You have to be smarter than your sources to leverage the system in ways that are good.

Since your writing career is yours, you should love it. Not in an overly sensitive, cloying way, but in a joyful, generous way.

No one wants to participate in anything else, for all of the reasons I just mentioned.

And if you need an attitude adjustment on any of these points, feel free to set up a coaching call with me. Because everyone gets down or discouraged at various points in their writing career — that’s normal.

But letting the disappointments and the setbacks make you cynical — that’s an affliction and it impacts others negatively.

You have to decide if whatever is impeding you is going to stop you or make you wiser and more resilient.

Really, writing career success is so simple. You move away from what isn’t helpful and move towards what is helpful, just like in regular life.

So go follow Jane because she’s helpful. And she isn’t going to let you fall into cynicism or self-pity. And that’s hard to come by in this world!

Writing for love and money? This sounds idealistic. But your unique path is the only one worth pursuing, so go for it.

Your journey won’t look like anyone else’s in the rear view…and this is how it should be.

All this and more! Please subscribe to The Prosperous Writer Blog and sign up for The Prosperous Writer Newsletter, for exclusive discounts you won’t find elsewhere.

In America, we have been raised to believe that anyone can succeed if they are determined enough and work hard and consistently over time.

As a writing coach, I have seen this belief in action. From my perspective, the most determined writers, who never give up and bounce back fastest seem to succeed the most, as opposed to the most talented writers, who often give up quite easily, and therefore don’t succeed as much as you might expect.

Determined writers who enjoy learning and thrive on growth, are also just a lot more fun to work with and to be around than writers who project superiority and entitlement.

Writers with grit spend a lot less time feeling sorry for themselves or thinking that they will never succeed.

If you are a writer, and you are feeling stuck, ask yourself if you have mastered the all-important growth mindset.

According to an uncited handout from my daughter’s school, growth mindset means you embrace challenges rather than avoiding them.

You persist in the face of setbacks rather than giving up too easily.

Growth mindset means you see effort as positive, and as a path to mastery rather than fruitless or worse.

It means you learn from criticism, rather than ignoring it.

And growth mindset means you find lessons and inspiration in the success of others rather than feeling threatened by their success.

People with growth mindset, reach ever higher levels of achievement, because they set their minds on becoming more successful.

The other way of thinking, a fixed mindset, is likely to inhibit you from achieving your potential.

Furthermore, folks with a fixed mindset maintain a deterministic view of the world.

After 14 years as a writing coach, I have had the opportunity to observe many writers in action and I have noticed that it’s not necessarily the most optimistic but the most determined folks, who succeed.

It’s not the most easily inspired, but the folks most willing to do something with the inspiration, who succeed.

It’s the folks who see the journey as a process of give and take, who persist and therefore succeed eventually.

Writing career success is humbling and empowering. There is typically not a whole lot of free lunch for writers.

Writing career success is about answering the question, what are you going to do today with the best of what you have to offer?

The folks who get busy pursuing the answer to that question succeed in the short run and the long run.

So, here’s a question for you? Do you have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset?

Are you interested in challenges, obstacles, effort, criticism, and ultimately success…or are you content with keeping things the way they are?

Your answers are more likely to determine your fate than any amount of talent you do or do not possess.

Will the groundhog see his shadow on Monday?

Will we have six more weeks of winter?

I guess we’ll have to wait and see what Punxsutawney Phil has to say on Monday.

In the meantime, are you planning to become a better writer in February?

Are you working on your writing, rewriting, and selling skills?

What about your creativity? Are you nurturing it?

If you had not thought much about it until today, I can help.

Because whether we have six more weeks of winter or not, you can do a little bit each day towards becoming a more inspired writer, and it will only put a tiny dent in your bank account.

Here are the challenges that begin on Monday. You must register today, Sunday, February 1st by 9pm PT to participate in the February round of challenges.

Registrations after 9 pm tonight will be moved to the March round of challenges, so don’t delay.

While you are thinking of future challenges, sign up for The Prosperous Writer (in the sidebar >>>) so you won’t miss future discounts offered exclusively to subscribers.

And don’t miss my brand new challenge, Unwrap Your Creative Gifts. My daily creativity challenge designed to awaken your creative sensibilities. Click on any badge to register:

Receive 21 excellent examples of great writing in your inbox daily for 21 days. Click on the badge to learn more and register:

 Receive 21 more excellent examples of great writing in your inbox daily for 21 days:

 Receive 21 more excellent examples of great writing in your inbox daily for 21 days:

Anyone who is looking to become a more facile and joyful parenting article writer should take my Article Writing Challenge.

Anyone who is looking to become a more thoughtful and skillful parenting essay writer should take my Essay Writing Challenge.

Anyone who is looking to become a more thoughtful re-writer and polisher of her own words should take my Grammar & Punctuation Challenge.

Anyone who is looking to become more brave about selling work should sign up for my Sell Your Writing Challenge.

Taking this article writing challenge has given me a bank of article outlines to begin the new year and a way to keep on creating more and more when I get to the end of my current list. I highly recommend it for the writer dry of ideas, needing some sort of method to keep her inventory supplied, or just starting out and learning how to create ideas for herself. The best $20 I’ve spent to further my career.  ~ C. Alexander

During 21 Moments I discovered ideas for many intriguing subjects I wanted to write about that had not occurred to me prior.​ An excellent kickstarter to writing for pleasure as well as potential profit.  ~ M. Clair

Once again Christina has aimed her arrow and hit the bull’s-eye with a useful daily challenge. The Grammar & Punctuation challenge helped me efficiently revise current article drafts, keep an eye on tricky punctuation mistakes I shouldn’t be making, and hone my word choice and sentence structure. Writers can expect this challenge to be an effective continuing education tool to help them improve their overall writing.  ~ R. Franz

I like taking online writing classes or workshops, but by far I got the most writing out of 21 Moments. It really clicked with me, that a moment is just a segment of time. Since I don’t have a lot of time due to my day job and other commitments, doing the moments really fit into my schedule.  ~ J. Huspek

~ Ground Hog photo via Michael Wallace on Flckr

Have you received spam e-mail that appears to be sent to you from me?

But I am not spamming you. I wouldn’t, even if I knew how.

There are a lot of very intelligent people out there in the world, who do not necessarily use their skills for the common good.

I have been the victim of a spamming for some time now.

What the spammers do is use my primary e-mail as the reply address when they mass-spam lists of people.

Where do they get the lists? Why are they using my e-mail? What is the point of all of this?

None of these answers are forthcoming.

At first, I was upset. I felt victimized. I was angry. I wanted to know what I could do about it.

I also wanted to strike back…because they were using my identity to do their dirty work.

After all the time I have spent building up my reputation, spammers could just swoop in and ruin my name with one click of the “send” button.

That stinks.

Initially, I felt threatened by their misuse of my identity.

I realized I could go to great lengths to try and correct the situation, and to try and protect my e-mail addresses from spammers in the future.

But there is no guarantee that I can protect my e-mail addresses from falling into the hands of spammers now or in the future.

So, I’ve chosen to change my attitude about the situation instead.

I am powerless over spammers, the same way I am powerless over the behavior of anyone. And since I am not the one who is doing anything wrong, I have decided to let the whole thing go.

So if you get an e-mail that appears to be sent from me, it isn’t. It’s sent by a spammer.

I don’t know how they got their hands on your address. I don’t know why they think spamming is the best use of their time and energy. I don’t know what brought them to this level of desperation.

But I do know that I don’t have any energy for them beyond sharing this information with you.

And I would encourage you to ignore them, too.

If you are a victim of spammers, I am sorry. I know how it feels. It really does stink. But don’t let it ruin your day, okay?

Creativity is a noun.

It means the state or quality of being creative.

It also means the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.

Am I the only one who gets all gigged up just thinking about creativity?

Similar words include originality, progressiveness, and imagination.

Creativity means the process by which one utilizes creative ability.

Create is a verb.

It means to cause to come into being.

To evolve from one’s own thought or imagination.

To perform, to make by investing with new rank, to be the cause, to give rise to.

To cause to happen, to bring about, to arrange as by intention or design.

For fourteen years, I have been helping writers become more creative.

Obviously, I have had to become more creative myself in order to teach others.

This year, I am taking my creativity to a whole new level.

It’s a little bit daunting, to be honest.

I am branching off in directions that I would not have previously attempted.

I am throwing away the net.

There is going to be a lot of trial and error.

There already has been plenty.

But I am loving the journey.

I am learning a ton. And I am loving the way my new Creativity Challenge, Unlock Your Creative Gifts, has been inspiring me.

So far, here’s how the creative adventure works.

You put creativity in. And you get creativity out.

Creativity in. Creativity out.

Join me. It works. And it’s really fun and enriching.

If you have never taken a challenge with me, consider signing up for the new round that begins on Monday.

If you have enjoyed taking writing and freelance challenges with me in the past, you should take another. Because you deserve it!

If you like to receive daily prompts of any kind, you should try my challenges, because they are thought-provoking and creatively inspiring.

In fact, I can give you ten reasons why you should take a challenge. Here goes:

1. You are more than the external goals you set. Who helps you take care of your creative growth and development? This is something I do for folks who embrace a sense of their ever-evolving potential.

2. You are more than your to-do list. Life is never going to stop being busy. Don’t keep waiting for things to slow down, because they won’t. Just jump in and do a challenge because they all fit in a busy schedule.

3.  Your creative potential is huge. You may not be surrounded in life by folks who consistently affirm this. Well, good news. I see your potential and I would love to see you express more of it.

4. You have real-life responsibilities. I know you do. So do I. So does everyone! We are not going to let the fact that we are grown ups prevent us from continuing to expand creatively.

5. You have down-time every day. And if you don’t, you should probably take a bit here and there. Taking a challenge with me for personal and professional growth can help.

6. Your heart and soul love creativity. If your life is feeling stale, flat, and unprofitable, then it’s time to excite your heart and soul with creative growth.

7. Winter is an exceptionally creative time of the year. I adore winter. The short days and long nights inspire me to be more thoughtful and introspective and I encourage you to let them do the same for you.

8. Personal growth is empowering. If you are feeling frustrated or stuck in any areas of your life, taking on personal growth challenges in the New Year can really lead to more happiness and personal satisfaction.

9. You can experience growth in a short time. I hear it again and again from people who take these challenges seriously. Professionals experience immediate boosts of inspiration and productivity. Why not you?

10. You don’t need a lot of money to express yourself more. I created my challenges with low price tags so more people could benefit from working with me. Take advantage of my challenges while they are here because my offerings are always in flux!

Here are the challenges that begin on Monday. You must register by Sunday, January 4th at 9pm (that’s tomorrow!) to participate in the first round of 2015.

Then please keep in mind that a new round begins the first Monday of each month.

And don’t miss my brand new challenge, Unwrap Your Creative Gifts. My daily creativity challenge designed to awaken your creative confidence. Click on the badge to register today:

Receive 21 excellent examples of great writing in your inbox daily for 21 days. Click on the badge to learn more and register:

 Receive 21 more excellent examples of great writing in your inbox daily for 21 days:

 Receive 21 more excellent examples of great writing in your inbox daily for 21 days:

Anyone who is looking to become a more facile and joyful parenting article writer should take my Article Writing Challenge.

Anyone who is looking to become a more thoughtful and skillful parenting essay writer should take my Essay Writing Challenge.

Anyone who is looking to become a more thoughtful rewriter and polisher of her own words should take my Grammar & Punctuation Challenge.

Anyone who is looking to become more brave about selling work should sign up for my Sell Your Writing Challenge.

Taking this article writing challenge has given me a bank of article outlines to begin the new year and a way to keep on creating more and more when I get to the end of my current list. I highly recommend it for the writer dry of ideas, needing some sort of method to keep her inventory supplied, or just starting out and learning how to create ideas for herself. The best $20 I’ve spent to further my career.  ~ C. Alexander

During 21 Moments I discovered ideas for many intriguing subjects I wanted to write about that had not occurred to me prior.​ An excellent kickstarter to writing for pleasure as well as potential profit.  ~ M. Clair

Once again Christina has aimed her arrow and hit the bull’s-eye with a useful daily challenge. The Grammar & Punctuation challenge helped me efficiently revise current article drafts, keep an eye on tricky punctuation mistakes I shouldn’t be making, and hone my word choice and sentence structure. Writers can expect this challenge to be an effective continuing education tool to help them improve their overall writing.  ~ R. Franz

I like taking online writing classes or workshops, but by far I got the most writing out of 21 Moments. It really clicked with me, that a moment is just a segment of time. Since I don’t have a lot of time due to my day job and other commitments, doing the moments really fit into my schedule.  ~ J. Huspek

You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.

~ Winston Churchill

Up and at ’em! Get up earlier (or go to bed later).

Exponential productivity. Consider your most productive time of day and work then.

Keep it simple. Don’t make a big “Look-What-I’m-Doing!” festival out of your work. Just feel good about getting your work done each day.

Stay grounded. Share your satisfaction with getting your work done in a low-key way with people who care and cheer you on.

Choose support wisely. Talk to supportive people about your writing success, but don’t mention it to people who have historically proven incapable of cheering you on towards your creative goals.

Steer clear of “Crazy-makers.” Short definition: folks who interfere with you getting your work done. Stay away from them for 30 days and see what happens. 

Be as social or anti-social as you like. Don’t bow to peer pressure. Trust your gut to decide how little or much to work each day. You can make the decision daily to suit your comfort level and needs.

Balance your act. Recognize that big writing goals require communication of your intentions and needs, while still requiring you to be mindful of others’ goals and needs. It’s all a big balancing act — so pace yourself.

Check it off. Have a method for noting what you’ve drafted that feels festive to you. (Gold stars, anyone?)

Carry it over. Once you discover you can get and sustain writing momentum, stay as productive and engaged as you can throughout the rest of the year.

Consider this a writing workout. Think about the marathoner. How does he get and stay in shape? It’s all about the daily workouts. So is this.

Enjoy the writing ride. Walk away from your daily work with a clearer understanding of what makes your creativity hum. Keep making adjustment until you are as productive as you can be.

Whatever you are writing, your creative capacities are worth their weight in gold. Happy writing productivity, writers!

So much inspiration, so much time! Please subscribe to the Create, Share, Prosper blog and sign up for The Prosperous Creative ezine for exclusive discounts you won’t find elsewhere. Click on the Enter School tab above to put your creativity to prosperous use right now. Like words? Check out my Etsy shop. And you haven’t seen anything, if you haven’t seen all the helpful offerings in my online shop. Thanks for reading and thanks for sharing this post with fellow creatives!

~ Photo By Pete Markham

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The menorahs have been lit. The presents have been opened.

The holiday sales have switched to clearance sales.

And look out because they are going to start putting the Valentine’s Day gifts on display next!

You may still be entertaining or you may be hibernating.

You may be traveling or you may be curled up reading a good book.

In the meantime, how creative are you feeling?

If you are not sure you want to know the answer to this question, check out my new daily creativity challenge, Unwrap Your Creative Gifts.

Unwrap Your Creative Gifts is a 22-day creativity challenge that begins Monday, January 5th.

Each day, you will get a reminder of what you already know deep-down inside: you are an incredibly creative person and the world needs your gifts.

Maybe you have taken time to consider your gifts and imagine how you might contribute more creatively to the greater good. Maybe you have not. Maybe you have just been too darn busy lately to think much about what you have to offer.

Regardless, this 22-day challenge will light a fire in your heart and motivate you to actualize your full creative potential all year long.

And if you think other people are more creative than you, by the time you complete this challenge you will remember that you are just as expressive as the most creative people you know.

I bet you have put a lot of energy in recent months into taking care of gifts and celebrations for others. Now maybe it’s time to do something special for yourself.

Cultivate your unique gifts. You have them in abundance. We all do.

I hope you can join us for a 22-day celebration of all the gifts you have to offer!

Learn more and register here.

We’ve moved beyond Thanksgiving at this point in the year, but I hope gratitude has not worn out its welcome in your home office yet!

The best way to create reachable, satisfying goals for next year, is to sit for a moment in quiet gratitude for all that you have accomplished this year and all the years leading up to this year.

Can you feel that? It’s a great feeling if you can tune in to it.

If you can’t feel it, maybe you should wait on those goals for next year.

Because setting goals from a feeling of frustration or impatience is just about the worst way to approach goal-setting.

And don’t be surprised if you don’t get as much done as you like and don’t enjoy as much as you’d hoped, if you start your year off from a negative state of mind.

I am feeling so grateful today for all that I have accomplished in 2014 thus far. I am humbled by all the awesome women I have worked with over the course of the year. And I have also been fortunate to serve so many editors whom I genuinely like and respect.

And you should have seen the 30-something new parenting articles I wrote this year. They were totally cool and I really enjoyed crafting them. I enjoyed it so much that this was the year that I started showcasing some of my creative approaches in Article Writing Challenge to benefit and inspire other freelancers. And I even noticed the inspired results in my some of my students who took the challenge.

I also created 12 new monthly columns for my fourth time around as a newsletter columnist for Willamette Writers.

I created four freelance writing challenges in total throughout the year. And I continued to offer some of my 21 Moments writing challenges part of the year. I created my first online video course. It’s called, Writer Platform Success: Assess Your Strengths & Skills Now. This course allows many more writers to work with me on their platforms at their own pace than ever before.

This year, I also taught five sessions of classes and two rounds of Dream Teams, which means that many of my students were repeatedly published and several of my students were able to create, polish and launch new books. Congratulations to…

• Carol Alexander author of Homestead Cooking With Carol: Bountiful Make-ahead Meals
• Lara Krupicka author of Bucket List Living For Moms: Become A More Adventurous Parent
• Christa Melnyk Hines author of Happy, Healthy & Hyperconnected: Raise A Thoughtful Communicator In A Digital World
• Marianne Peters author of Declutter For Good: Share Your Stuff & Reclaim Your Life
• Sarah J Swofford, MPH author of From Ouch To Ahhh: The New Mom’s Guide To Sex After Baby

There are a few more books launching in 2015, if you can believe it. And I am proud that all of my students’ books make the world a better place.

I also started a new type of Dream Team, the Essay Writing Dream Team, which has been beyond fun and has produced excellent results, some of which have already been published.

I also launched a new book this year, The Art Of Making Time For Yourself: A Collection Of Advice For Moms.

In addition, I launched a short workbook called Creative Knowing: 50 Self-reflection Questions For Women.

I discovered a handy quote-making app called Insta-quote and created dozens of quote badges, which I distributed through Instagram and other other social media outlets.

This year, I also recorded a conference call about Unlock Your Writer Platform Profits, which is available as an MP3 if you missed it.

I have some ongoing monthly writing career consult clients, whom I treasure dearly.

And last, but certainly not least, my husband Jason and I created an Etsy Store called Words, Glorious Words! We are so close to making our goal of creating 50 items in 2014. Only a few more to go over the holiday break…

I updated my annual list of movies about writing and the writing life, which now totals 292! Next stop 300, folks.

So that’s my year in a nutshell.

You can probably tell that I was never lonely or bored.

In fact, I was always happy and prosperous.

The whole story is: I had an amazing 2014 and I can’t wait to set my goals for 2015.

Join me in this process by rounding up what you accomplished in 2014 before you set your goals for 2015.

And before you commit a single idea for 2015 to paper, be sure to congratulate yourself for all that you have already done.

So much inspiration, so much time! Please subscribe to the Create, Share, Prosper blog and sign up for The Prosperous Creative ezine for exclusive discounts you won’t find elsewhere. Click on the Enter School tab above to put your creativity to prosperous use right now. Like words? Check out my Etsy shop. And you haven’t seen anything, if you haven’t seen all the helpful offerings in my online shop. Thanks for reading and thanks for sharing this post with fellow creatives!

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