Murphy Writes Blog

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Career Happiness

Are you following your bliss?

I just had a birthday, and let’s just say I’m closer to entering retirement than I am to entering college. For readers who may be way younger than me, you might not “feel” what...

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Work / Writing Tips

25 things writers should stop doing

Today as I was jotting down thoughts for a New Year’s blog about some of the things we writers (me especially!) need to stop doing this year, and other things we might start trying...

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Inspire

13 things I learned in 2011

I don’t know about you, but 2011 has probably been the most difficult, bittersweet year I can recall. It was a year in which I excitedly published my first book, and then lost my...

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Work

The NaNoWriMo self-imposed writing frenzy

I am joining with thousands of writers around the world to participate in NaNoWriMo, the annual self-flagellation writing event for authors who want to prove to themselves that they can finish an entire novel...

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Work

Favorite writing quote of the day

“I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.” ~ Clarence Budington Kelland, an American writer who once described himself as “the best second-rate writer in America”    

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Authors / Work

A chat with NYT bestselling author Jamie Ford

In the summer of 2008, I got the fortunate assignment from Sun Valley Magazine to write an article about the Minidoka Japanese Internment Camp pilgrimage that happens each June. Hosted by the Friends of...

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Work

Social media: Does it connect or disconnect us?

  graphic source http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2014-05-06-socialmedia.jpg “On Twitter we get excited if someone follows us. In real life we get really scared and run away.” ~ Author Unknown Lately I’ve been thinking about how connected  — or maybe...

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Work / Writing Tips

Today’s favorite quote on writing…

Jamie Ford, the bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, when asked “What holds back most beginning writers and what they should do to make it better?” “Two things. One:...

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Career Happiness / Essay

Have you stayed too long at your job?

“Job security is gone. The driving force of a career must come from the individual.” ~ Homa Bahrami, UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business   I will never forget the time I left a job...

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Work / Writing Tips

Recovering from writer’s block

Let’s see a show of hands:  Who among us has ever gone through a writer’s block? It may be hard to admit, but I think most writers have had a dry spell or two...

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Writing Tips

5 things that can help keep writers on track

Being a writer can be exhilarating one moment — for example, when you’re winning awards or you have editors contact you personally to write a story — and lonely and frustrating the next —...