How Do You Keep Writing When Things Go Wrong
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We all have times when life interferes with our plans. Sometimes it seems that everything goes wrong at once. That really throws off your writing schedule.
Lately, my life has had far more downs than ups. I have family members with severe medical crises on both sides of the family. The holidays didn’t help me keep my schedule either, but because of the circumstances, I ignored them for the most part.
Everyone is out of the hospital now. (At least as of this very minute.) Still, there are three or four of my family members who will never truly be well again.
I’ve come to some realizations lately. The most important is that writing keeps me sane.
We lose sight of the need to care for and nurture ourselves in the middle of all the chaos. We can’t care for others until we take care of ourselves.
Writing help me stay sane when things go wrong by…
- Allowing me to carve out some “me” time
- Taking me to a place where I do have some, if not all of the answers
- Letting me visit a world where I have some control
- Letting me focus on a thorny plot problem or complex sentence structure
I don’t have all the answers when I write. Sometimes my characters won’t do what I want them to. But, I feel a lot better having written. I’m then able to deal with the less manageable circumstances in my life.
Try to write a little every day—even if it’s just a note about how you are feeling at that particular moment. You can use the emotions, if not the words, to power-up your other writing later.
It isn’t selfish to take some solitary time for your writing. Take care of yourself and you will be able to take better care of others.
I don’t know about you, but I have to keep writing when things go wrong. Julia Cameron defends the right to write in her book by the same name. She says to write when things go wrong and when they are going right.
How do you keep you keep writing when things go wrong?
Write on,
Lynn Jordan
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One way to help with stress relief is to journal on a regular basis. It helps you keep you sanity and help relieve stress and gather your thought. There was a time where I had a journal and I went back to review it. What I discovered was how much I had grown as an individual and How my thinking had changed.
Journally not only helps with stress, keep on track but helps you see where you now and where you have come from.
[...] Next they say, “when the kids are all in school” or “when the kids start college” or “when I retire”. They all mean, “when I find time to write”. [...]