Since I was recently reading (and just reviewed) Dara Girard’s The Writer Behind the Words, I have ‘the writer’s life’ on the brain. So today we have a meta-exercise. Free-write a list of emotions that get in the way of your achieving your writing goals. Pick the one that you think blocks you the most, and free-write about how it impacts you and what you might do to work with or around it.

Free-write about what you imagine a perfect holiday would be like. Cover the whole day, from morning to night, although you don’t have to write it chronologically. You don’t have to use Christmas or the equivalent as the holiday—pick any holiday, whether it’s your birthday, the Fourth of July, Passover, or the summer solstice.