Surrender Your Weapons: We have abused and belittled ourselves long enough. We have been our own worst enemies, our own worst critics, the harshest arbiters on Judgment Day. We have ignored and neglected our writing altogether or shot it down in infant form, before it had a chance to take its first breath. The first rule of The Halfway House is to stop, to arrest our masochistic tendencies, and let our work be what it is.
-- The Halfway House for Writers


Of all the lessons I've needed to learn as a writer and a human being, Surrender Your Weapons resurfaces most. Weapons take many forms, many of which we wield against ourselves. Judgment, comparison, impossible expectations, perfectionism, doubt, insecurity, destructive behavior, self-sabotage. Surrender Your Weapons began as the first rule of The Halfway House and grew until it became a book all its own. When we surrender our weapons, the truth begins to emerge, brave and beautiful, in our lives and on the page.