Nancy Christie's Blog - Posts Tagged "writinglife"

(A longer version of this article originally appeared on my blog, Focus on Fiction.)

When I was young (never mind how young), I used to think that writers sprung fully formed into their profitable and prolific literary careers, like Athena who, according to Greek mythology, sprung from Zeus’s forehead.

Now that I am older (never mind how much older), I know from firsthand experience that the road to writing is a long and winding one, full of stops and starts, detours and roadblock, successes and setbacks.

And since writers, like the rest of the population, like to eat, have a roof over their heads, and pay their bills, the literary life often exists in tandem with a non-literary occupation.

Sometimes the work famous authors did to earn their bread before they started having some success with their words had, on the face of it, little connection with their subsequent published work.

So that made me think about the rest of us, myself included, and the kind of work we did (and possibly still do) before we started writing full-time.

Does the work in some way align with writing: as a teacher, copywriter or editor, for example? Or do we choose to keep our two forms of labor as far apart as possible on the career categories scale, not wanting to overload our creative gray cells?

And if we have switched the type of work we used to do to something that seems more “writer-ly,” do those other jobs in some way still come into play in our literary life?

Nothing is ever wasted, especially if you’re a writer. And while sometimes it’s overheard conversations or witnessed interactions that inspire the creative process, other times it can be from experiences closer to home that serve as triggers: jobs we held, people we met, even emotions that those occupations generated.

So don’t regret your day jobs, past or present. Use them as source material!

Read my latest article on Medium
on how incorporating some “Nantucket time” into my daily schedule may help me cope with the stress and uncertainty of life.

Last month in my writing newsletter, I wrote about a variety of things:
• My disappointment with my garden (Probably my fault for not giving it enough water)
• My problems with technology (Resolved, but not without a lot of words my mother wouldn’t have approved of!)
• My struggles with finding an agent (Sadly, no good news on that point, although the feedback I’ve been getting from beta readers has reinforced my belief that the book has potential—Yay!)

I also wrote about my feelings after reading Alice Koller’s An Unknown Woman and my plan to incorporate some “Nantucket Time” into each day.

And I’m proud to say that, with a few exceptions, I followed my plan. I sat with my coffee and journal and did some writing each morning during my “Nantucket Time” and while not every day provided me with earth-shattering revelations, it did allow me to explore my thoughts and hopes, my goals and objectives.


It also pushed me to examine my regrettable tendency to believe that at my age (never mind what age that is!), it’s too late to achieve my writing goals.

The last was further reinforced by reading the New York Times’ obituary for the artist Luchita Hurtado at 99. Although she had been painting for years, Hurtado’s work was rarely exhibited until the 1970s, and she didn’t start to gain major recognition until 2016 at age 96.

The point I took away from her obituary was that she never gave up. It was the art that drove her, not the hope of fame or fortune.

Message for me? That my focus should be on writing. If my work gets published, that’s a bonus—the icing on the cake. But my first priority should be on doing the work itself, and not letting the rejections stop me from the act of creating new pieces.

As for my “Nantucket Time” strategy, while I intend to continue it, I am also expanding it to explore mindfulness—something I learned about when talking with author Camilla Downs for this month’s Living the Writing Life podcast episode.

Mindfulness isn’t meditation, but awareness: in essence, paying attention to where you are. Engaging all your sense in that awareness. Not multi-tasking—something I do almost automatically—but single-tasking.

By involving all your senses in the activity, you can’t help but improve your ability to be a more creative writer. I think of it like filling your mental pantry with experiences that you can draw on when it comes time to describe a scene or a character’s actions.

But it also is about paying attention to your own reactions: what emotions are sparked by those sensory experiences. The feelings come up, you allow them to be part of the experience and you not only perhaps gain a better understanding of events from your past but also, as a writer, incorporate that understanding when describing a character’s reactions or thought processes.

So I have started a list of what mindfulness activities I can engage in despite any COVID-19 restrictions. I’ll let you know next month how it goes, and if I have tried any others as part of my mindfulness moments.

And if this has encouraged you to try mindfulness, let me know what you did and how it turned out.

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newsletter, The Writing Life with Nancy Christie, and receive a free writing-related tip sheet as a bonus!

On my Living the Writing Life podcast, I share some of my thoughts on writing and life for January: how recognizing our own vulnerability can push us to find our courage and continue to move forward with our writing and with our life.

You can listen to the podcast here:
Thoughts on writing and life for January 2021

The other morning, I went out early for my walk, even though despite the sunshine it was still cold—really cold. (That’s the thing about Ohio. How it looks from inside the house is vastly different from how it feels when you go outside!)

But I went, not because I was particularly enthusiastic about doing my 2.7 miles but actually because of the reverse. Lately, I’d been feeling sluggish, tired, generally pooped out, and I hoped that at least doing some cardio (such as it was) might rev me up, physically and mentally.

While I walked, I went through my list of what I had to accomplish: a couple of client projects, a redo of the Powerpoint slides for a webinar I’m giving next month, new strategies to generate book sales. But it all felt a little too “been there, done that” like I was spinning my wheels but going nowhere fast.

Then, as I walked up my driveway, I saw it: the first early blades of something green (crocus, maybe?) poking through the still-cold ground. How brave of that plant to stick its little nose out (so to speak) when there was a very good chance that in the next day or so, snow might fall again!

When flowers like irises, snowdrops and hyacinths emerge, it reminds us that, no matter how cold and dark the winter may have been, there is still life ready to appear, and that spring is just around the corner!

And I suppose that also applies to our writing life. While in theory we should have been very productive since COVID eliminated the possibility of going anywhere but to our home office, the fact is that all that enforced restriction and isolation has led many of us (myself definitely included!) to feel burned out and bummed out.

It’s hard to be optimistic about anything when it seems like all we are doing is waiting. We pitch a story idea and wait. We reach out to reviewers and wait. We submit our work to competitions and wait. We query agents or publishers and wait. And the longer we wait, the more we believe that it has all been in vain, that no one wants what we are writing, that what we have written isn’t good enough to win an award or get us representation or be published.

That’s how I was feeling when I spotted those brave little stems of green. And ridiculous as it may sound, that’s all it took to make me feel a little better, a little hopeful, a little more like there might still be something ready to blossom for me. There was just a tiny stem of hope, a tender blade of enthusiasm, poking through the frozen soil that was my spirit.

Tomorrow when I go out, I’ll look for more signs of spring in my flowerbed. And when I get back in my home office, I’ll do my best to keep that reminder of possibility alive. And maybe, just maybe, something will bloom.