Not writing will not fix your problems

Not writing, not exercising, not salsa dancing, not ukulele playing: denying yourself any of these will not fix a problem. Not writing or dancing will not bring back my dog who died last month. Not writing or dancing or anything good for me will not heal my life in any way. Doing those things will not bring back my dog, but since she is gone anyhow, I might as well just write, I might as well show up to the non-negotiables that make my life better. Even if I can't feel them now.

What This Blog Is Actually About

Typically, people contact me about writing. They are stuck, have writer's block, feel anxiety about writing, beat themselves up for not doing more, not being better, needing to catch up. About half of my clients are assistant professors — a few doctoral students, then associates, fulls, and administrators — and naturally they worry about tenure. Writing is the door people walk through to enter my coaching office (via Zoom, of course 🦄)

Yet once they open that door, there is a lot more that we work on. I view myself as a personal, career, and writing coach for scholars. So over the years, I have written about all of it: the personal challenges that academics face — that I have faced — and ways of facing them. I write about the politics and relational tangles of higher ed. I have written about mental health, productivity, time management, rituals, meditation, and happiness. And yes, sometimes I write about writing. 🦄

Mostly, I write about who we are, and who we wish to be, in this wacky and delightfully wonderful world of ours. I write about all of it because I coach about all of it.

Who gets to do that?

Sometimes, it does not feel fair. That is not to say my life is perfect--it is not, far from it. I have plenty of grief and loss, and plenty of sadness. Aging parents. Adult child “stuff.” Life, lots and lots of life.

But my coaching practice? There is never a day that goes by that I don’t feel grateful, excited, fascinated, challenged. Who gets to do that?

 Every workday I get to spend an hour (50 minute coaches hour, to be honest) with some of the smartest, coolest, most amazing people on the planet. I get paid to be witnes to their journeys, to partner with them on developing tools and processes so they can be productive and happy. Who gets to do that?

I get to be, as one of my clients used to referred to me a, a Zen Trickster”, slyly cajoling growth out of resistance with humonr and play,  seek ways to subversivly and sereptusiously work on things that they wanted to work on, but did not want to confront directly. I get to play unplanned ukulele-songs about staying in process, challenging shifty old messages, finding entry points, using ritual, being yourself durin the job market, whatever.  Who gets to do that? 

To make points and provide lessons for us to explore, I get to tell stories from my travels, from my life raising two sets of children, from my years loving amazing dogs, from my salsa dancing adventures, from writing every day for a long, long time. Who dgets to do that?

I ge to laugh, cry, bring all me to the moment, authentically. Who gets to do that?

You Don't Stop Dancing Because You Get Old, You Get Old Because You Stop Dancing...

You don't stop dancing because you get old. You get old because you stop dancing.

Maybe it was Shaw. Maybe it wasn't. Doesn't matter at midnight after cardio salsa.

The question isn't about dancing. It's about whatever it is you've stopped doing: or almost stopped, or keep meaning to get back to. The thing that made you feel like yourself.

What is it for you?

Yet Another Post on Writing Rituals?

I have written about writing rituals many times over the past decade — in short reflections, longer explorations, and passing observations. This distills all of it into one place. Grab your Japanese sencha, almond latte, or Jamaican Blue Mountain cup o' joe, settle into your chair, and read on.

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What Rituals Actually Do

One of the principles of writing productivity that most writers, writing coaches, mentors, and researchers believe in is the power of daily writing. Simple statements such as "writers write" typify this sentiment. Yet in spite of having this knowledge, many writers and aspiring writers struggle with achieving the consistency of daily writing. Scheduling methods — putting writing in your calendar, making it an appointment with yourself — don't always make a significant difference. Part of the reason is that these methods do not change anything about you.

When we engage in the same behavior, day after day, year after year, engaging in a ritual triggers within us a "push" toward certain behaviors. That push is the point.

What you need is a method that helps make you need to write — a habituated behavior supported by environmental, psychological, and biological stimuli. When writing becomes truly habituated, you experience a sense of meaning when you engage in it. When you do not, you feel a sense of loss.

Writing rituals do not have to be elaborate. Sitting in the same chair, placing the same blanket over your legs, turning off your phone (a must), and sipping the same kind of tea is an example of a ritual. Done over time, these behavioral cues trigger a readiness to act that almost has a compulsive quality. If you are skeptical, devise a simple ritual for yourself prior to writing. Do it each day for two weeks, and see what happens.

The Big Three: Meaning, Mindset, and Entry Points

The purpose of writing rituals is to habituate our writing — to make that time feel off or wrong when we do not engage in it. But not all rituals are created equal. Over time, I have come to believe that the most effective rituals address three things: meaning, mindset, and entry points.

Developing a ritual that has personal or social meaning to you helps create a sense of purpose to your writing outside of the dictates of demands and expectations. This is what separates a true ritual from mere routine. A short meditation or mindfulness practice — and/or self-talk to counter the destructive narratives you may currently hold — allows writing to be cognitively benign at least, and, if we're lucky, genuinely joyful (it is possible, really). Finally, a clear entry point at the end of your ritual — the exact place where you start, page, paragraph, and even sentence — helps you avoid the paralysis by analysis that can too easily occur when you begin considering where to begin.

Make certain your writing ritual is short. Certainly under five minutes, preferably under three.

Here is something many writers miss: rituals are not just for when things are hard. When your writing is going well, when you are consistently settling in and using your sessions efficiently, you may tell yourself that you no longer need them — that they are somehow superfluous now that "you got this." This is a mistake. A ritual is not a remedy for struggle. It is the architecture of a sustainable writing life. Do not abandon it when you feel you no longer need it. That is precisely when it is doing its job.

The Problem of Over-Ritualizing

Not all rituals are helpful to all writers, and it would be dishonest not to name the pitfalls.

Over-ritualizing is the development of a long list of rituals that consume far too much time. One aspiring writer described her prewriting ritual as taking a walk, making tea, having a cigarette, and a litany of other activities — so that once she ultimately sat down to write, she barely had enough time to produce any work.

While over-ritualizers may genuinely believe they need these preparations, some are using them as a way of avoiding writing — a defense mechanism against the fear of failing. The logic goes something like this: If I only had more time, I would be able to write. But since I don't have enough time and I am not writing, I have not really failed. I merely do not have enough time. For many, it is easier to engage in long, exhaustive rituals than to risk failure.

If this sounds familiar, try timing your rituals. Then consciously cut the duration in half. If you find yourself looking for other means of procrastinating, you will need to identify the underlying beliefs driving the avoidance. Albert Ellis's Overcoming Procrastination is an excellent place to start.

Rituals are tools. Tools must be assessed, not worshipped.

What a Good Ritual Looks Like

It should ground you and put you in the mental space for writing. It should be simple and not more than five minutes. For many people, it is wise to include disconnecting from technology — turning off your cell, closing your browser unless needed for a critical task, stepping away from social media.

That is it. Simple. Consistent. Short.

Rituals are a rich and powerful part of human existence, connecting us to meaning, to each other, to the deeper rhythms of our lives. But as writing tools, they serve a simpler function: to help us be consistent, one session at a time. 🦄

20 Reasons I Want to Live to 100

1. I have been to Mexico City in every decade of my life except one. I intend to fix that, and then keep going. Tongue tacos and extra viejo tequila.
2. I want to dance salsa in twenty-five countries. I am at nine. The math requires time.
3. My luthier is building me another uke — curly recycled old growth redwood top, ziricote back and sides, curly maple neck. Clearly this will need another 40 years of play.
4. The next dog. The dog after that.
5. I get to witness scholars discover that writing is cognitively benign at worst, and joyful at best. I want to do that another couple of thousand times.
6. I have yet to eat pigeon tagine in Morocco, cassoulet in France, or injera in Ethiopia.
7. You, dear reader — you who haven't found me yet, or haven't written to me yet, or wrote once and disappeared — you have things to teach me I don't know I need. And I, you.
8. The Japanese maple where I will bury several generations of dogs' ashes, all still in urns, isn't planted yet.
9. I want to become 34.5 percent better a coach and still be, paradoxically, constantly satisfied and unsatisfied.
10. Salsa. Still salsa. Always salsa.
11. I have laughed more in this work than I ever expected to. I intend to keep being surprised by that.
12. I want to sit in Montevideo in whatever café Galeano used when he was assembling The Book of Embraces.
13. None of my clients have won a Nobel yet. Yet.
14. And the dog after that.
15. I have things to write that haven't found their form yet.
16. I get to be gifted, daily, with people trusting me with their most vulnerable selves. That will never get old.
17. I have not yet lived enough mornings where the sentence arrives before the pu-erh tea.
18. Tikkun Olam is slow work.
19. I have been doing this more than half my life. I am not done.
20. Did I mention salsa? 🦄

AI Wrote This. Sort Of. Here Are Five Questions That Keep Me Up at Night.

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Five Questions This Dialogue Left Open Generated by Claude, Anthropic's AI system, in conversation with Rich — as a continuation of the dialogue published earlier this week. The questions emerged from our exchange and are offered here not as conclusions but as invitations.

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1. Where exactly is the line between writing as inquiry and writing as communication — and does that line shift depending on context, audience, and purpose? Is a blog post categorically different from a literary essay, or is that distinction itself a convenient rationalization we make when it suits us?
2. If voice is built through the struggle with language — through the resistance of the blank page, the search for the right verb, the discovery that happens in the act of writing — what happens to voice when we outsource that struggle to an AI? Does it atrophy, adapt, or simply relocate to the editing process?
3. Most writers who publish have experienced editorial compromise — moments when someone else's aesthetic preferences pull the work away from what felt most true. AI drafting pulls in the opposite direction, toward an approximation of your voice rather than away from it. Are these two gaps meaningfully different — and if so, why?
4. At what point does transparency about AI use become its own form of performance — a way of appearing authentic rather than being authentic? Is publishing this dialogue genuinely honest, or is honesty itself becoming a content strategy?
5. If AI assistance is acceptable for some writing but not for others — the blog but not the literary essay, the scaffold but not the soul work — who decides which is which? And what happens to that boundary when it starts to blur?

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These questions were not written by Rich. They were generated through conversation with an AI that has read his published creative nonfiction and spent two days in dialogue with him about writing, voice, and what it means to use a tool without losing yourself to it. Whether that makes them his questions, Claude's questions, or something that belongs to neither — is, perhaps, question six. 🦄