Monday night I attended a panel given by a Boston-area writing group. My own writing group is coming up on our one year anniversary, so here are some take-aways from their talk, and from my experience.

Want a way to truly get to know your characters? Pick a Myers-Briggs personality for them.

Take the anxiety out of writing — especially freelance writing, which is compounded by having to create great work for others — by simply pounding out a shitty first draft.

I’ve recently started using an approach to my writing that’s keeping everything much more organized, and makes the act of writing much less daunting. What is it? Writing in Excel.