Writing during a vacation might initially sound like a great idea: Having a lot of free time, being in a relaxed environment, and enjoying unusual settings must be great for inspiration. And inspiration is good for writing, most authors would agree. But are writing and vacationing really compatible?
As with virtually anything else related to writing, it’s all a matter of balance. There are neither evident answers, nor easy solutions.
For many authors, combining writing and vacationing might connote an image of someone dragging a laptop to the beach, then ignoring everything and everyone around them to focus on writing.
There are several reasons why this might be unproductive, if not fail altogether: Most typically, it would involve ignoring the people you have traveled with. Few things can increase tension more rapidly than ignoring your friend, family, or partner during a vacation.
But even if you’re vacationing alone, this kind of head-on immersion in writing can cause a lot of stress. You’re basically ordering yourself to be productive, setting high expectations: “You’re on vacation, with tons of free time,” the little voice in your head keeps nagging you, “therefore, you must write a lot. No excuses.”
Such scenarios are recipes for disaster. In most cases, you could end up fighting with your loved ones and produce substandard work—if any at all.
But there is good news: It doesn’t have to be this way!
Continue readingIf you fall down the right wiki-hole in the tinfoil hat-wearing corners of the internet, you’ll learn that “it was aliens” is a rational origin for much of modern technology. Whether it came as gifts from our interstellar allies or was reverse-engineered from crashed saucers, no one at Area 51 is returning my calls to confirm.
But in a big way, reading another author’s work is the same as discovering a UFO from another galaxy and digging out its secrets.
Some philosophers say each person is a world, so it would follow that each message they send out is a vessel from that world. So how do we as writers who want to upgrade our own abilities brush away the dirt and damp forest leaves, find a seam for our crowbars, and pry open a panel of alien metal to reach the glowing sprockets and humming diodes inside?
Continue readingAfter writing full time for four years, I’d still modestly consider myself a rookie writer. But just by advertising my articles on LinkedIn and Twitter—where I have a half decent following—occasionally younger, more inexperienced writers get in touch with me and ask me this question:
“How do I become a successful writer and get clients?”
It’s quite funny, actually; I remember torturing writer and writing coach Elna Cain with similar questions in the past.
“Elna, how can I become a better writer?”
“Elna, how can I earn money writing full time?”
“Elna, where can I bag myself clients regularly?”
Her answer was pretty clear, and that was to keep practicing my writing—practice even when I’m not working on a project—write even when I have no clients—and when I’m not writing … read.
Continue readingJust in case you’re panicking, let me assuage your fears right away: No, it doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to play chess or knit. In fact, when it comes to knitting, to me it appears as something only slightly less complicated than quantum mechanics.
The crux of the matter—and the reason this post is important to any writer looking to improve their craft—is how a seemingly irrelevant activity or hobby can help you with your writing.
In my case, that unexpected source was chess. For someone else, it might be knitting, gardening, playing guitar, or crafting origami.
As I have mentioned in the past about sensory writing exercises, before an author writes about anything at all, they first need to experience the world around them.
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