Over the weekend, I started reading Chuck Wendig's Gentle Writing Advice. I don't see books on writing as a cure-all, so to speak, but this one was exactly what I needed to read.
I was reading a section in a chapter called "Self-Care for Writers," and I had a lightbulb moment. Wendig was talking about the importance of self-care. Allowing yourself to take breaks, rewarding yourself for your efforts, and more. However, one particular note spoke to me. He said that if you take off a day or two, it can become a week or two of taking time off from writing, then soon you'll find that "you've self-cared your way into not writing at all, ever."
Oops.
It turns out that, in the midst of feeling too busy and too overwhelmed for creative writing, I had accidentally "self-cared my way into not writing at all," as Wendig puts it.
When I recognized that, I knew I had to do something about it. Reflecting on my schedule, I asked myself when was a realistic time of day that I would consistently write?
I decided upon my lunch break.
This week, I've written during my lunch break for at least a half hour. Well, more specifically, I'm working on revising a story. (I ran into another issue lately when I thought, gosh I'm never revising my stories, so why write anything new?) So, knowing that thought crossed my mind, I knew my writing routine would have to include revisions for the time being.
Building back a broken writing routine isn't easy. It's strengthening a discipline that had weakened and it's motivating yourself in a way that feels like starting at square one. However, if you have found yourself drifting further and further away from your writing goals, it's never too late to start again. I encourage you to identify a spot in your day that has the most possibilities for you to write regularly.
If I can do it, you can do it.
Nicole Pyles is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. She frequently shares her reflections on her writing blog, World of My Imagination. She's also mastering the art of saying no to projects and assignments when she already has too much on her plate.
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2 comments:
Nicole, I so relate to this! I've had such a busy year work-wise that I've self-cared myself out of writing. That is such a true quote by Wendig! I'm glad you're revising your story, and you know I'm taking you up on this challenge and becoming a lunchtime writer, too! Yesterday I pulled up some freewriting I did at the beginning of the year, and for every piece, I read through it and pulled the most interesting sentence from anywhere in the piece and put it at the top of a new page. Then I got excited about writing again.
I love your technique on getting yourself excited about writing again! That's half the battle right there. In the story I'm revising, a lot of what I'm doing is cutting down things/cutting out and combining scenes, and I really didn't think it'd be possible. But it's finally coming together and I'm getting a vision of the character I hadn't before. It's such a wonderful feeling to be connected to it again.
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