Be consistent in showing up. Getting to your writing only once in a while won’t keep it alive. Make “routine” and “regularity” sacred words!
Creative people are often spontaneous and many of us prefer to work when we are “inspired.” What a mysterious and magical idea that is, right? Sure, it is. But I am here to tell you that if you subscribe to that thinking, you will rarely get anything written. Did you hear me? I’ll say it more clearly now:
If you wait to write only when inspiration strikes, you will get very little done.
Some creative people believe that when we are not ready, receptive, and open for ideas when inspiration strikes, that the idea becomes lost forever. That thought is too dark and fatalistic for me to embrace. I prefer to believe that once an idea is born, it lingers forever, searching until it finds a welcoming home. And wouldn’t it be lovely if that home was you rather than some other author?
By showing up at the page, we invite the muse, allowing inspiration a portal or channel. Sitting to write says, “I’m ready, I am here. Bring it on.” It gives the ideas a safe landing spot where they know they will be appreciated and tended to.
How, you might ask, am I supposed to create routine and regularity with my writing when the children must be taken to school and ball practice and dentist appointments, the boss asks me to work another ten hours this week on that special project that is overdue, I feel like I’m coming down with a cold, and the yard is overgrown with weeds?
As brutal or simplistic as this might sound: that’s life; find a way.
This idea of routine and regularly has taken me years to accept as truth. And it is truth. But still, I continuously must strive to act on that belief, to embrace it fully and with ease. While journaling in the form of my morning pages—a concept put forth by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way—seems fairly simple for me to do on a regular basis, working on my book has been, for many years, sporadic. A bumpy ride of irregularity. Toward the goal of giving it the attention it deserves, I have rearranged schedules, shifted priorities, and deliberately planned writing events into my life. I even quit my job, in part, to give my writing more love. When I am away from it too long, quite simply, my heart aches. I physically feel within my body the distress of that dereliction. By the time you read this, I will be returning from a four-day homecoming, not only with my novel and its characters but perhaps, more importantly, with my vision as a writer and for my writing work. This Vision Quest and other events such as retreats, conferences, and monthly critique groups are part of my deliberate efforts to stay connected to my writing, in general, and to my work-in-progress, specifically. To participate, I had to clear the calendar, purposefully let some things go, manage my time efficiently in the week leading up to this . . . and afterwards, I am sure. But those are the sorts of things we must do in the midst of life in order to keep writing. There will always be obligations to others, housework, yard work, sickness, demanding family, arduous employers, life’s little and big emergencies. What is your plan for continuing to write through them, to stay connected to your writing and its purpose?
Gina Hogan Edwards is the founder of Around the Writer’s Table. She is also an author perpetually seeking the most elegant means to navigate a writer’s struggles so she can share her successes and failures in ways that support the writer you want to be.
Gina Edwards is a retreat leader, a certified creativity coach, and a book editor. She is also a writer, so she’s intimately familiar with the challenges and elation that come with being one.
She supports all writers—published and aspiring—who want to write as an act of courageous and necessary self-expression.
Walking the writer’s path hand-in-hand with her clients and students, she helps them establish a writing practice and define a creative life on their own terms.