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From Trash To Treasure: Mining Your Messy Writing for Gems
As writers and creative types, we all have techniques to get in gear and move our work along. When I write and coach other writers, I approach the early stages of writing as an opportunity to generate great material. I describe the approach as, “Make a mess…then clean it up.”
The “make a mess” part is fun, liberating, and can generate a considerable volume of usable material. I encourage clients to “write for the trash,” i.e., with complete abandon. This process removes our inner judges and leaves us with piles of material to sift through.
Cleaning up our messy writing is a chance to find gems in the trash. By being thoughtful about reviewing our work and having a system to organize it as we clean, it’s possible to find all sorts of things we can use in a variety of current and future projects.
Setting and Keeping a Schedule: Confessions of an Unhealthy Remote Worker
As I sit down to write this article, four days past its due date, at one in the afternoon, after scolding myself for wanting to take a nap literally three hours after waking up, I ask myself why any reader would want to listen to me talk about a healthy work schedule.
Hear me out! My struggle makes the need for this article all the more apparent… because I’m one paragraph in and about to take a lunch break…
How to Show the Writer in Your Life That You Love Them
Writers have…a reputation.
Whether it is that they are closed-off and obsessed, or flighty and bohemian, or difficult and pedantic, most of us have some sort of mental image of what we think being a writer is like.
That’s probably because we either saw it in a television show or movie, or we might have the pleasure of knowing an actual real-live writer in our own lives.
And we’ve based our idea of what a writer might be on them, creating an archetype in our heads that we either adore or have come to loathe.Continue reading
Falling in Love With Writing Again
If there’s one emotion or feeling that I’ll often hear writers talk about, it’s love.
Ask a writer why they chose their profession (of, you know, writing for a living), and they’ll most likely tell you it’s because they love writing, from composing long-form articles to crafting personal creative pieces.
They love the feeling of capturing a certain emotion using the perfect combination of words. They love putting their ideas out into the world in hopes that they may connect with someone else, so that their words can inspire others. Each time a writer publishes their story, or wraps up the conclusion in a way that makes them feel warm fuzzies on the inside, it almost feels like falling in love over and over again.
Sure, I might be romanticizing writing just a little bit, but can you blame me? I’m a writer.
But just because a writer loves to write doesn’t mean that the feeling is always strong … When you’re in love, it’s easy to view the world through rose-tinted glasses.
Until reality hits you like a ton of bricks, shattering those pretty pink glasses. (Not the glasses!)Continue reading