corinne!

Oh, hey there! Are you ready to start writing an award-winning novel, but aren’t sure where to begin? With these handy tips, you’ll be a winner in no time.

There’s a myth that writers can simply begin writing anytime and anywhere they see fit with as little as a pen and paper, but this is a pernicious lie perpetrated by the pen and paper industry. A writer cannot seriously practice this craft without each of the following items in place.

1. One notebook, slightly worn 

2. One computer that hasn’t been backed up 

3. Two pens without ink 

4. One pen with ink, but it’s far away

5. One phone full of distracting apps 

6. A chair that is painful to sit in after fifteen minutes 

7. A mug of room-temperature coffee 

8. One cat 

9. Yawning chasm of self-doubt 

10. One pair of glasses (smudgy) 

11. One pair of sunglasses (if writing a screenplay) 

12. Talent 

13. Six more notebooks 

14. Feelings (if writing a poem) 

15. Eye of newt 

16. A glass of water placed within inadvertent spilling distance of the computer

17. Comfortable clothing suitable for napping 

18. A copy of How to Success! 

19. Elbow pads, for all of the elbow resting you’ll be doing 

20. Precarious stack of twelve books you own but have never read, and never will 

21. One book open in the middle and placed facedown 

22. Passion 

23. A difficult-to-ignore ticking clock 

24. The desire to do anything but write 

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” (Toni Morrison)

Happy #ObamaDay

Watch: President Obama is challenging men to really question their biases when they feel like Hillary Clinton is “unlikeable”

A Charlie Brown Christmas, by Charles M. Schulz. 1965