He's Tricked Me Again!

My friend is relentless, tricky and a liar. He got his wife (the trickery) to tell me my writing suggestion was great (the lie), she 'begged' me to post another helpful suggestion, as she held my iced tea out of my reach until I consented (the relentlessness. I love iced tea).

Friends and patients have asked me what inspires me, and what helps me to sit down and write. I find that the two go together, that which inspires me--creativity of any kind--actually activates my inner urge to create. Since writing is my dominant, possibly only, creative ability, when I'm filling my hours and days with art in all it's forms, I feel my need to write.

Sometimes it is another author I've read that lights the spark. But not always. I had a writer guru once tell me that I should never, ever read others' works when I'm writing my own book. The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators make the suggestion that a writer should read everything in their genre, all the other best writers. Two totally contradictory suggestions!

You know what? They're both correct. One of my discoveries about writing is that different suggestions work at different times, and that no one's suggestion is right all the time! Never. So, sometimes I find myself reading others who write children's stories; sometimes I have to stay away from reading others. Sometimes I listen to music (not while I write--I have a single cell brain; I can only do one thing at a time.), sometimes I have to keep my hours free of the story distractions in songs and musicals. There are times when a museum or art book is ignition to my writing engine; other times, I have to close the book, walk out of the museum, because I've seen enough, or too much, and it's taken me away from my own story. Good grief, once perusing a book on national parks restarted my stalled mind.

Maybe if writing was my sole work, and I could dedicate forty or fifty hours a week to it, I could move more easily and consistently from neutral to full throttle. I could shift back and forth from writing to pondering...in fact, one of my fantasies is to have so much free time, that I could be writing on different stories and projects at once, and could shift from one to another as I felt the urge and need. But that's not my situation, and I suspect that's not the situation of most writers. I have a primary job as a psychologist, and I am fortunate that I love my work. I look forward to seeing patients; I enjoy Mondays (that may be a mental illness!); I feel real meaning and purpose in what I do as a therapist. So, that's not going away, and until I retire (which my wife just told me was planned for two years after I'm dead), writing is an avocation.

The message in this rambling? See if creativity in other forms helps your writing. Maybe you have multiple hobbies and creative outlets, and can use those to help the return to your story. Maybe you have times when any form of creativity is too much. Just listen to yourself. Don't worry what others say or suggest; listen to yourself, and what you need at that moment. Heavens, there have been times when what I needed was to not write, and that was the path that led me back.

There's my next thought on writing and what helps us. Let's see if my friend's wife can lie about this suggestion!

Have a sparkling week! Keep writing. Or not. Stop for time.

But then, return to writing. The world needs new stories. The world needs your story. You need your story.