Another Monday is upon us. If you have an office job, will you drag into work, thinking of fifteen other places you would rather be, with bed high on the list? Re-entry into the work week is hard, but re-starting your writing no matter what day of the week wins the Resilience and Determination Litmus Test hands down.
Here are three tips for restarting your writing routine:
1. The shorter time since you were last writing, the easier it is to begin. If you wrote yesterday and stopped at point where you weren’t totally spent, you have something more to give to the writing today. Stick to a scheduled writing routine.
2. Always have three key words at the ready to guide the day’s writing session. When you end each writing session, write down at least three key words that will spark your ideas for the next writing session. If you do that, you will have a way to move into the writing. Then re-entry may not be so overwhelming.
3. Starting your day with a workout or a run will recharge your brain. Have you heard about the schools that are now using exercise within the classroom and scheduling competitive, heavy-duty exercise early each day to awaken the kids’ brains? Dr. Charles Hillman at the University of Illinois says that exercise is “good for attention, it’s good for how fast individuals process information, and how they perform on cognitive tasks.”
In “The Happiness Project” blog, Gretchen Rubin says that when she drops her child off at day care, she could then exercise at her conveniently located gym before going to work, but she doesn’t want to waste the morning time. It is true that the morning is the best time to write, but exercise is never a waste of time.
For a faster restart to your writing and with less foot dragging:
1. Write daily.
2. Write three key words at the end of each writing session to jump-start the next session.
3. Spend 30 minutes on a treadmill or in other aerobic exercise each morning.
What about you? What’s your plan for a smart re-start to your writing?
Best to you,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
www.nancywhichard.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.usingyourstrengths.com
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
How do you keep going with a creative project when doubt and rejection loom larger than belief?
For years I wrote one unpublished novel after another. I knew about the struggle to create, all right. I had 5 children to support. I loved writing and the texture of a sentence. Yet I faced such doubts that at times I almost couldn’t carry on.
It was easier at the start, when I could still believe in the possibility of success. I wrote seven novels before one was published. How to keep going? I still didn’t know. I was stuck halfway through yet another novel and nervous about taking on a project to write a mythology textbook. A writer friend, Bridget, and I came up with a plan ~ we would text each other two random words at night and in the morning, before dawn, we would make something out of them. In this way we would shortcut doubt and procrastination and begin each day already being writers.
On the third day, I started to write what seemed like lectures from a guide I called Godfrey. I thought I would photocopy them for Bridget. On the day I wrote there were fifty more lectures to come, I realised it was a book length project. I wrote almost every dawn over a winter, in my house beside the sea. I wrote a book I didn’t set out to write and I did it without thinking, without stopping, for twenty minutes a day. That was the first thing I learnt ~ that by simply doing it, something would grow.
I went on and wrote the myth book, finished the novel, published two more. The fear has mostly gone. Doubt still lives on and procrastination thrives in many guises. But after meeting Godfrey in these pages, I think I know enough now to carry on.
Jillian Sullivan
LikeLike
Jillian,
Thank you for sharing your experience. What a wonderful approach for fighting self-doubt and isolation. And “Simply by doing it, something would grow” are words to remember. Congratulations on your success.
LikeLike