Anna Gates Ha2 minMorning Words and MagicIn the early morning, the summer air is magnanimously cool. I rise before anyone else is awake. I sit on my little cushion, close my...
Anna Gates Ha3 minLearning to Meditate, Learning to Write a NovelWhen I first picked up Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, I was in a pretty bad place. I’d been a mom for about three years, and...
Anna Gates Ha4 minFor Emotion- and Character-Based Writers: How to Get to the Plot?For a very long time, when someone asked me what my novel was about, I became really anxious. It didn’t matter if I had two-hundred or...
Anna Gates Ha2 minTo a Writer, Whose Baby Will Not SleepOh, mama. Things haven’t gone as you’ve planned, have they? It’s eleven o’clock at night, and your baby has been screaming for the last...
Anna Gates Ha3 minUsing Fear as an Editing Tool From an evolutionary standpoint, fear is very useful. It was fear—increased heart rate, tense muscles—that allowed our ancestors to...
Anna Gates Ha4 minOn Presence & WritingAbout a year ago, standing near the cold cut display, I met a woman who said she’d been to infinity and knew the meaning of life. She’d...