14. Practice vs praxis (Or, getting the real work done)

You’ve probably heard this core and celebrated advice for a successful writing life:

1. Write every day
2. Finish as many projects as possible
3. No exceptions

And maybe, like me, you’ve also heard this extremely well-adjusted and reasonable guidance more times than you can count: Being a writer is awful. So if you’re able to walk away from your writing, you should—but if you’re too obsessed to quit, no matter how miserable you get, that’s how you know you’re the real deal.

That last nugget of wisdom scared me away from books on the writing life for years.

This month, I get honest about “failing” this classic (and ultimately unhelpful) advice. And I’m exploring how writing praxis can rescue your writing practice from becoming just a bunch of self-punishing rules spiraling inside a pit of despair.

Plus, I share the four key threads of much better guidance that I learned from finally binge-reading hundreds of pages of writing life advice from Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and others.

Writing praxis tip

If you were intrigued by the idea of using praxis goals within your writing practice, I’ve put together a few prompts to help you start playing with this distinction in your own work.

These prompts begin with some more abstract journaling and gradually get more targeted, so you can formulate a few key, bite-sized praxis goals to apply to your concrete practices. (And there’s a brief example at the end.)