This quote made me cry.

Because we writers forget to celebrate what makes us happy. Our victories. Our achievements. Our writing goals that have been reached.

Make time to celebrate them. 

Every once in a while you get a very eager reader—eager to prove to you that you have written your book wrong. Or some variation of that.

Your first impulse is to defend your creative child. To explain what led you to this or to that creative decision.

Don't explain. Save your breath. By trying to justify the reasons you made this or that decision you do two things that will sink you fast:

There is always one. Life is full of them.

As you ignore them, you'll notice that most of them resolve on their own. It's because they were never true emergencies. They only felt like emergencies to someone who in turn made you feel like it's an emergency.

Keep your calm. Protect it. Emergencies will come and go. Your writing won't. Your writing time shrinks every day, as every day you get closer to your death.

Writing time is precious, and there is often not enough of it. 

How to create more?

Eliminate the little, superfluous things. They suck out minutes that become hours that become days.

I've already reviewed the book Tribe of the Mentors by Tim Ferris in this post, and I urge you to pick it up and read it (it's a huge beast!). It's worth it.

While reading it today I came across interviewee Sarah Elizabeth Lewis (the book is a collection of interviews) who mentioned her Harvard colleague Robin Bernstein, who wrote this paper titled "The Art of No." 

DROP WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND READ IT NOW.