Writing Wisdom - Train Your Brain
Over a series of blog posts, I will share my seven pearls of writing wisdom. This is pearl number two. They are based on a chi running programme I did years ago. I found them so helpful, I adapted them to help me build a healthy writing habit. I am a keen distance runner and found it interesting how running advice could be easily adapted to improve my writing.
Everything we learn can be reshaped, reused and recycled in a way that improves other aspects of our lives. No learning, however obscure, is a waste. Store all your experiences away where they can be retrieved and use them to pollinate other areas of your life.
Running requires us to build up slowly, to allow our muscles to make the physiological adaptations necessary for a bigger workload. When you become a writer, you need strategies to flex your motivational muscles. There will be endless diversions, time sucking activities, distractions, tasks requiring immediate attention or friends and family suddenly needing your energy. It is good to be prepared and have the scaffolding in place to resist temptation to delay getting your bum in the chair.
It can be easy to obsess about structure and planning, getting so many words down or getting published but writing is not just about rules and methodology. You need this scaffolding, the basic principles required to produce good quality work, but more than anything writing is about words. Putting one word after another.
It is necessary and important to read books about the craft, to attend workshops to hone your skills and become familiar with technique but in the end, it really is about putting your bum in that chair and getting the words down.
Begin by finding ways to write regularly. For me that is early morning. I set an alarm a few mornings a week and plug away at whatever project I am working on. A manuscript, a non-fiction essay or a piece of flash. That time is a commitment just like my hours at work. It is an appointment I make with myself.
I know writer Anne Freeman wrote her first book using her mobile phone while breastfeeding a baby. Behrouz Broochani wrote his award-winning book, ‘No Friend but The Mountains,’ while incarcerated in Manus prison. He sent thousands of text messages via WhatsApp enabling thousands of pdf files to be smuggled off the island to tell the story of his perilous journey and survival. His book went on to win the Victorian Prize for Literature and Victorian Premier’s Prize for Non-Fiction.
It does indicate that carving out a writing habit is possible, even under great duress.
Do what you need do to put aside regular time for your writing habit. It may be slipping away in the evenings after dinner or heading to a library or café a few days each week.
Create a space that inspires you to write. Ensure your computer is charged, your notebooks right there, pens at the ready for when you pull your chair in and roll your sleeves up. Pin up motivational quotes if you need to or mark a calendar with your writing days. If you are not lucky enough to have your own space, get yourself a beautiful box and place your writing things in there so that you can just pull it out, ready to start at the allotted time.
Every week has seven days with twenty-four hours in each one. No bestselling author has been gifted an extra hour or two to get their work out there.
Get a piece of grid paper and mark off 168 hours and then colour in the time you work, sleep, exercise, do chores. Are there any squares left? You might need to steal some squares back as a gift to your creative self. Be imaginative and treat those precious squares of time the way you would any other finite and valuable commodity.
It can be helpful to have a deadline for something. Find a series of writing competitions dotted throughout the year or set a challenge with your writing group to exchange a chapter or short story each month.
Do whatever works to keep your motivational muscles flexed.
Happy writing.
Everything we learn can be reshaped, reused and recycled in a way that improves other aspects of our lives. No learning, however obscure, is a waste. Store all your experiences away where they can be retrieved and use them to pollinate other areas of your life.
Running requires us to build up slowly, to allow our muscles to make the physiological adaptations necessary for a bigger workload. When you become a writer, you need strategies to flex your motivational muscles. There will be endless diversions, time sucking activities, distractions, tasks requiring immediate attention or friends and family suddenly needing your energy. It is good to be prepared and have the scaffolding in place to resist temptation to delay getting your bum in the chair.
It can be easy to obsess about structure and planning, getting so many words down or getting published but writing is not just about rules and methodology. You need this scaffolding, the basic principles required to produce good quality work, but more than anything writing is about words. Putting one word after another.
It is necessary and important to read books about the craft, to attend workshops to hone your skills and become familiar with technique but in the end, it really is about putting your bum in that chair and getting the words down.
Begin by finding ways to write regularly. For me that is early morning. I set an alarm a few mornings a week and plug away at whatever project I am working on. A manuscript, a non-fiction essay or a piece of flash. That time is a commitment just like my hours at work. It is an appointment I make with myself.
I know writer Anne Freeman wrote her first book using her mobile phone while breastfeeding a baby. Behrouz Broochani wrote his award-winning book, ‘No Friend but The Mountains,’ while incarcerated in Manus prison. He sent thousands of text messages via WhatsApp enabling thousands of pdf files to be smuggled off the island to tell the story of his perilous journey and survival. His book went on to win the Victorian Prize for Literature and Victorian Premier’s Prize for Non-Fiction.
It does indicate that carving out a writing habit is possible, even under great duress.
Do what you need do to put aside regular time for your writing habit. It may be slipping away in the evenings after dinner or heading to a library or café a few days each week.
Create a space that inspires you to write. Ensure your computer is charged, your notebooks right there, pens at the ready for when you pull your chair in and roll your sleeves up. Pin up motivational quotes if you need to or mark a calendar with your writing days. If you are not lucky enough to have your own space, get yourself a beautiful box and place your writing things in there so that you can just pull it out, ready to start at the allotted time.
Every week has seven days with twenty-four hours in each one. No bestselling author has been gifted an extra hour or two to get their work out there.
Get a piece of grid paper and mark off 168 hours and then colour in the time you work, sleep, exercise, do chores. Are there any squares left? You might need to steal some squares back as a gift to your creative self. Be imaginative and treat those precious squares of time the way you would any other finite and valuable commodity.
It can be helpful to have a deadline for something. Find a series of writing competitions dotted throughout the year or set a challenge with your writing group to exchange a chapter or short story each month.
Do whatever works to keep your motivational muscles flexed.
Happy writing.
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