Writing During Holidays

For many people, holidays are a time for family and friends. But if you forget to take time to write, you will pay for it. So what to do? If your holiday means family, friends, and special activities, not only can you still write – you can take advantage (in a good way) of these changes to your routine.

• When someone asks what you're writing, try giving a pitch summary. If you can't do this for your story, you probably are not clear enough about it in your own head.
• Save a list of quandaries in your work – research questions, choices to be made – and use them as discussion material
• Find character contrasts and assk others' opinions on them (ex: mentally linked idealist and cynic)
• Pay attention to thee current weather and how it affects the people around you.
• How do the people around you react when under pressure (there's sure to be some stressful situations when lots of people spend large amounts of time together).
• Pay attention to the festive foods, dress, and décor. How is it unique to your culture? Brainstorm with your loved ones about a similar holiday and how your character would celebrate it.
• Ask several people to read the first chapter. This is a great time for feedback. If you're worried they will give you false praise, ask for just 3 things you could work on as well as everything they liked about it.
• Flash fiction, short stories, and poems make great gifts or supplements to holiday cards. If they are nonfiction reminisces, so much the better.

Finally, if you respect yourself as a writer, it is not too much to ask that others respect you too. Set aside some time for you and your writing. Even a small time (or several small times) evvery day will help keep you from getting rusty, your ideas from stagnating, and your story moving forward.

“Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Writing Without Motivation or Inspiration

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Today the writing does not flow. Do you ever just not feel like writing? But you have a commitment – to readers, to yourself, maybe you are even lucky enough to have a deadline. So you write. You might drag, your quality might suffer (or seem to), but you lay down one word at a time. And you make headway on your work in progress.

Inspiration makes it easier to write. Motivation makes it easier to write. But neither is necessary when you have notes or an outline. This is why I like outlines so much. Once I discovered outlines, I no longer had the excuse for writer's block. When you have an outline, you can make it more and more detailed – almost to a sentence level – so you always know what to write.

An outline does not need to be an alpha-numeric list. Mine starts as a summary. When I have no motivation and no inspiration, I take the sentence that condenses my scene and begin to elaborate on it. I brainstorm and choose the best options. You can learn to brainstorm from very little. I expand my outline/ summary in three's. When writing at a more macro-level, I use an inciting incident, a complication, and a resolution/complication. When writing at a micro-level I create a stimulus, reaction, and response.

Writing without motivation or inspiration becomes more difficult for me when I do not have an outline. But even when I don't have a plot, I have a story I like to tell. A particular type of story that can be told many ways, through many characters and events, in many settings. So I use that as an outline in the broadest sense.

Even on the days you do not feel like writing, you can make progress. It is not the end, it just takes a little more fight. Being a writer takes many traits and one of them is the will to fight. Even if the trait is underdeveloped, you can start now by sitting down and writing.

A Key to Happiness When Writing

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Happiness is not what you have. Awards are nice, but the glow fades. Social recognition can motivate you, but what about when it turns against you? Publication is very nice but contracts are not forever. Having these things can give temporary happiness. Not having these things can give unhappiness. But either state is usually temporary.

Unhappiness does not come from the obstacles you face: not social rejection, professional rejection, or even writer's block.

Happiness is not in how you identify yourself. Where you are in the lists is not entirely in your control. Freelance or contract, what works for you now may change. Poet, novelist, screenwriter, none of these give more happiness than the others. Whether you write part-time, full-time, or casually, the type of writer you are does not lead to happiness.

Unhappiness is not a stage of the writing process.

Happiness is internal. It comes from how you think about what you have, how you identify yourself, and what you do. Change your thoughts and you change your mood. Now if only that was simple...

"Must I write?"

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“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose...

...Describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds – wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. - And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

The Need to Write

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Do you have the need to write? That is what makes you a writer. Maybe you write novels or poems – or blogs (or a combination of these). Whether or not you share your works, you are a writer. For a writer, writing is like breathing – sometimes natural, sometimes labored, always necessary.

The need to write can manifest in many ways, including side-effects when you don't write. Me? I get restless and distracted if I do not have the chance to set words down every day. My family has come to accept that even on vacations, I need my writing time. When I don't write, I also become very talkative. This may because writing for me is a form of communication and sharing with other people.

I don't think the need to write is a simple one. For me, the need to communicate is bound up in my decision to write for publication. But I don't write for the sake of becoming published since I wrote for years without that goal. As a person with disabilities, writing is a way to give to the world. In a similar vein, writing also also mostly answers my need to create something that only I can make. Think back to the Poetry Sharing Event. Those poets all wrote to the same theme but every poem was different. Writers of every medium are the same.

I find it fascinating how the need to write can take so many forms. As far as I know, only authors, poets, and bloggers follow this blog but there are so many other wonderful types of writing. Writing – and products built on writing – fill our world. Even “non-readers” do not escape its reach entirely. Television relies on screen-writers, after all. Vocal music relies on lyrics.

I think it safe to say that the need to write has shaped our culture. Even though it sometimes that society is moving away from reading, there will always be a market for it. And there will always be a place for people who write, not for publication, but for solely themselves.