Yes, we should all write every day—but even professionals go through periods when they’re too busy to follow such a demanding schedule.  In the closing lecture of this year’s DePaul Summer Writing Conference, Miles Harvey offers practical advice on how to maintain a writer’s mindset even when life gets in the way of one’s work.

Miles Harvey is the author of Painter in a Savage Land: The Strange Saga of the First European Artist in North America (Random House), which received a 2008 Editors’ Choice award from Booklist and a best-books citation from the Chicago Tribune. His previous book, The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime (Random House), a national and international bestseller, was selected by USA Today as one of the top ten books of 2000. His fiction has appeared in publications such as Ploughshares, AGNI, and The Michigan Quarterly Review. Harvey teaches at DePaul.

DePaul University teams with the Chicago Public Library for the DePaul Summer Writing Conference, featuring programs devoted to the art of the written word. The Chicago Public Library is pleased to host the opening and closing programs.

Recorded Sunday, July 17, 2011 at the Harold Washington Library Center.