If you ask a thousand writers what their writing process looks like, you’ll get a thousand different answers. Writing advice is often conflicting because each writer’s process is so deeply personal.

If you’re looking for a blueprint on how to write, you’ll find plenty, though it’s possible that none of them will work for you. There’s no one right way––there are thousands of right ways.

At the end of the day, it’s not writing advice you need. It’s a shift in your writer mindset. You need to think about writing differently. Rather than seeing the writing process as a series of steps or a process you need to hack, or even habits you need to cultivate, the magic happens when you can understand writing as a theory so you can build your own practice instead of relying on the practices of others. When you approach writing with a healthy, productive mindset, you can more easily tap into your own intuition and find what works for you.

This book is about how to think differently about writing as a whole because when you change the way you think and get your mindset right, doors open up, inspiration is easier to find, and you see possibilities where before there were none.

At the end of each of the 29 essays in this book there’s a journal prompt. The prompts aren’t designed to generate content that you’ll publish later, though it’s possible that may be the end result. Rather, these prompts will help you do a deep dive on your attitudes about writing, publishing, and even yourself so you can have a better, healthier relationship with your craft. 

This book is divided into three sections: Mindset, Wisdom, and Sustain. Mindset helps you investigate commonly held beliefs about writing so you can dismiss the beliefs that don’t serve you and write new stories for yourself. Wisdom contains writing advice that will make you think differently about your craft as a whole and give you insight on opening yourself up to vulnerability so you can better connect with your readers. Sustain focuses on how to stay strong amid discouragement and peer pressure, as well as how to keep your writing practice going, even when it feels like it’s going nowhere.