On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

In her latest release, 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round, novelist Jami Attenberg, shares her advice and that of over 50 other writers.

Here’s an inspiring essay from Hannah Tinti:

When I was younger, I did pottery. Before I learned how to throw on the wheel, or fire a kiln, or even how to press a pinch pot, my teacher showed us how to make clay. There was a huge barrel of slip in the studio, a trash can filled with water, where everyone would throw their mistakes. Any failed creation (that hadn’t been baked yet) would be recycled back into the mud, and the first step to making new clay was to grab a heavy shovel and start tossing these old mistakes in the giant mixer. Every once in a while, we’d open the lid and check the consistency. If the clay was too dry, we’d throw in another shovel of failure.

This is how I’ve come to think of first drafts. Before you can make a priceless vase or a heartfelt novel, you’ve got to make the clay. And you better put on some overalls, because you’re going to get covered with muck. The good news is, you can recycle some of your old ideas. In fact, using the slurry of previous work ages your clay (like fine wine in an oak barrel), making it stronger and more flexible, which greatly increases the chances that your next creations won’t end up in the slip bucket. So think of your 1000 words today as raw material. It doesn’t have to look like anything yet. But one day you’ll come back to it and spin it into something beautiful.

Source: 1000 Words, p. 157

On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

Whenever I need a boost, I reread Write Smart, Write Happy by award-winning author Cheryl St. John. Here’s an uplifting excerpt:

More than once I’ve heard the mind compared to land or soil. Land is lying there, available. If you have a yard or a garden, you know this. A farmer knows it, up close and personal. Land doesn’t have an opinion about what becomes of it; it’s ready for anything. If no one ever plows or plants seeds or fertilizes, the land will produce only weeds. Maybe a stray wildflower or tree seed will happen by, and if the weather permits and there is adequate rain and sun, those seeds will grow into plants. Anything that grows is by happenstance.

But a farmer can plow and prepare the soil and plant any crop he wishes—anything from corn to deadly nightshade. Land doesn’t care. It will produce whatever is planted. But land always returns what is planted.

The same is true for our minds. We can let our minds fall idle to whatever happens to fall in and take root. Or we can create goals, prepare our thoughts, and plant success. Our minds don’t care what we plant, but whatever we plant is what will grow and be returned to us.

Source: Write Smart, Write Happy by Cheryl St. John, p. 256

On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

Last month, New York Times best-selling author Louise Penny received an honorary degree from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. Here’s the powerful speech she delivered to the Class of 2024:

My favorite quotations:

“Hope is a revolutionary act, and civility is terrifying to those who would divide us.”

“I am also very grateful to have looked into the void. No gap: no miracles, no joy, no books, no Dr. Penny.”

On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

Whenever I need a boost, I reread Write Smart, Write Happy by award-winning author Cheryl St. John. Here’s an uplifting excerpt:

Sometimes a book is merely a job. Sometimes a book is not enjoyable to write. But we love being writers, or we wouldn’t do this. We love having written something that will touch and inspire others. We love the magic of stories and creating worlds and people we can manipulate to draw emotions from our audience. We love being writers.

Sometimes it’s an effort, but we must remember our first love; we must transport ourselves back to those days when we first knew we had to put those people in our heads on paper and create stories for them. Whenever I’ve been discouraged or questioned my choices, I’ve always asked myself the same question: What would I rather be doing?

Even before I was published, I was frustrated and wondered if I should keep pursuing this dream of being a writer. I sometimes wished I could be content to do something else, something with a quicker payoff and a visible reward for the effort. But in my heart of hearts, I knew I would not be satisfied until I’d given writing my very best and written stories that touched readers the way so many books have touched me.

So, if you believe you’ve lost your love of writing or have become discouraged, ask yourself, What would I rather be doing? If there’s something else that fills that place in you, by all means do that thing. If not, remember your first love. Find the joy, the awe, and the inspiration and discipline to move forward.

Source: Write Smart, Write Happy by Cheryl St. John, p. 78

On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

In a recent post on Writers Unboxed, author and coach Kathleen McCleary shared excellent advice for dealing with writer’s block. Here’s an excerpt from that post:

Charles Dickens started writing an autobiography when he was 33 and already famous for writing Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol. He found writing truthfully about the dark years of his childhood to be so painful that he abandoned his autobiography and instead, at 37, started writing David Copperfield. In it he explored all the memories that were too much to process in reality: working in a factory as a child while his father was in prison, attending school with a sadistic headmaster, his relationship with his wife. It was his favorite of all his books.

Nora Ephron wrote her first novel, Heartburn, after discovering that her husband was cheating on her while she was pregnant with their second child. The main character at one point says she tells stories “Because if I tell the story, I control the version. Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story, it doesn’t hurt as much. Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.”

So, what are some ways to write yourself whole? You know better than I do, but here are a few ways to get started:

◆ Write the childhood you wish you’d had.

◆ Write the thing you wish you’d said.

◆ Write the ending you wanted or want for your marriage, career, friendship, life.

◆ Write who you’d be if you’d chosen to take that flight to San Francisco for a job instead of staying in D.C., or whatever that pivotal life decision was.

◆ Write who you’d be if you’d said “yes” instead of “no.”

◆ Write the Band-aid for the hole in your heart and psyche that haunt you.

◆ Write your secret. Write your deepest longing. Write your starkest truth.

◆ Write in a different voice than you’ve ever written before.

Do this not in journals or memoir but in fiction, in telling stories that give you the distance to have a better understanding of and more compassion for the person experiencing those things, making those choices, failing and flailing.

The English critic G. K. Chesterton wrote about his experience of reading David Copperfield, “[Dickens] has created creatures who cling to us and tyrannize over us, creatures whom we would not forget if we could, creatures whom we could not forget if we would, creatures who are more actual than the man who made them.” In other words, creatures who are whole, who restore us, the readers to wholeness, as well as the author who created them. I’d say that’s a pretty fine thing to do.

Source: Writer Unboxed