Ooops! I didn’t think I had the blog from Mary until I read through my huge inbox from yesterday. So now you have two blogs for today to comment on! ~DD
A Few Sneaky Tricks To Make A So-So Writing Day Better!
By Mary Kennedy Eastham
We all have days when our inner writing spirit needs a pep talk! Here are a few things that work for me:
…This one is easy. STAY ON TRACK. I try to end each writing day with a promise for the next day. When I go to sleep, I think about what I need to discover about my heroine. It could be something simple, like her fave late nite talk show host – is it Dave, Jay or Jimmy???
…This one is corny but it was suggested to me by a wonderfully successful fine artist. I start every writing day by giving myself a ‘star’, the way our teachers did in those early school days. I look for stars in fun paper stores like Paper Source. Their motto is: DO SOMETHING CREATIVE EVERY DAY.
…Drop and give me: 10 push-ups, a minute of jumping rope, 10 sit-ups, a minute of jumping jacks, 10 lunges and a minute of running in place. Repeat as often as you want to. I always feel better after exercise. Even if it’s only for a few minutes.
…Work on something else. I was really getting stuck in my novel Night Surfing, so one day I just decided to start writing a short-story “The Girl With Sand in Her Hair.” I am loving working on that story. It will be the final story in a short story collection of the same name.
…Give yourself a real treat. For me that’s a Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Mint Square. Then I pick up a book by one of my favorite authors. I sit down for only a minute and read a passage from the book very slowly and sometimes out loud. I let the beautiful flow of the language seep into my brain. It’s like listening to a favorite song. I’m all pumped and I can’t wait to get back to my writing.
MARY KENNEDY EASTHAM’s book The Shadow of a Dog I Can’t Forget is a 2011 WILD CARD Runner-Up Winner in the Hollywood Book Festival, WINNER of the 2010 Celebrity Achievement Award, was a Runner-Up for BEST POETRY BOOK & Honorable Mention Winner at the L.A. Guerilla Marketing Book Contest. Points of Love, a poem from the book, was a $5,000 award winner in the Dorothy Sargent Rosenburg Poetry Contest. Her website is: www.RP-Author.com/MKE. She’s on Facebook under her name and on Twitter under Word Actress.
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Love this blog….It flows with my theory the happiness is not found it is lived. I believe everyday you can choose to be happy, it is not something that magically happens.
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Good tricks. Very interesting. 🙂 Thanks for sharing.
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Great ideas to help us stay on track/work through anything, not just for writers. Interesting.
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what great ideas! i also find that if i just sit still with my eyes closed and take deep relaxing breaths and let go of all the stress or whatever is bothering me and keeping me from concentrating then i am able to focus and move forward with what i am working on. 🙂
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Good ideas; sometimes I just need to stop and watch the sky for a few minutes just to get my mind cleared.
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I couldn’t stop at just one mint chocolate square. I do try to do something creative each day but I often get seriously distracted. You know, like enjoying a few minutes of silence!
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Those are great ideas for any stay at home work, especially if you’re the only person in the house – you have to keep things going somehow. I particularly like & participate in the chocolate suggestion.
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Those are great ideas. If I can I try to do something new and creative each day or change how I been doing something. By changing how I have been doing something helps me get through that project.
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Wow, Mary these are really great! Wow! I’m really taking your advices coz’ recently I’ve been from one slump to another. I keep telling myself I should write something more but I always get stuck on a particular scene, I get frustrated and scrap it immediately. I’m the same type that stops in the middle and I can’t do that to my characters as a writer, right? I also read other stuff to get over this (I don’t know maybe this is just typical writer’s block, or I’m just procrastinating!), but your methods are simple and short!
Thanks for sharing your methods to us! Highly appreci 😉 ate this!
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Wow, Mary these are really great! Wow! I’m really taking your advices coz’ recently I’ve been from one slump to another. I keep telling myself I should write something more but I always get stuck on a particular scene, I get frustrated and scrap it immediately. I’m the same type that stops in the middle and I can’t do that to my characters as a writer, right? I also read other stuff to get over this (I don’t know maybe this is just typical writer’s block, or I’m just procrastinating!), but your methods are simple and short!
Thanks for sharing your methods to us! Highly appreciate this!