Last Sunday marked the end of my June
Writing Challenge. Though I didn’t write as much as I’d hoped, I still wrote
21,680 words during the month of June, which is pretty exciting! My third
Northwoods Barista mystery is now nearly complete, with about sixty thousand
words. I have a few minor issues to wrap up and some revision and editing to
do, of course, but the book is well on its way. Hooray!
I've made a few discoveries...
Write Early, Write Caffeinated:
I've mentioned it earlier, but I
realized that writing early in the day worked well. Writing with caffeine
helped even more. If I wrote in the evening, I was not as
creative, and I felt like it was more of a chore to complete before I could
collapse into bed. Summer is an exciting time for me to be creative, with
school out and spending time going on adventures with my two kiddos. But
chasing two small people on a playground or at a waterpark out in the sun can
take my energy right out some days and doesn't leave much for the evening.
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Community Support:
I know I benefit when I have a community of writers alongside me. That was
one great advantage of the time I participated in NaNoWriMo: I had the
community alongside me on the site and on Twitter, and people were encouraging
each other daily. Another place where I felt a lot of encouragement to write
was grad school: all of my fellow writers were eagerly sharing amazing and
diverse writing. That alone was inspiration enough to write whatever I felt I
had to put on paper. In the future, I want to build more community among my
friends who are writers and on Twitter and other platforms to keep myself
motivated.
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Just
Be:
Sometimes,
when I write, I feel pressure that I’m not doing things the “right way”, that I
need to be submitting my writing to journals, chasing after agents, publishing
everything, and marketing myself non-stop. I do realize these things are
helpful, especially if I want to make creative writing more of a career and to
build a reputation. I do dream of such a day, occasionally, but sometimes, writing is just a way to
relax. The school year is so busy—sometimes I wonder how I manage to juggle two
teaching jobs, two kids, and keeping the house from looking like a tornado went
through (well, some days...). I think part of the reason I can survive the school
year is that I make sure I take the time to relax and recover in the summer. I will actually ignore my email for a while. I will sit on the back porch
with a glass of iced coffee or lemonade. I will go camping with my family and
roast s’mores over a bonfire. I’ll go for a walk or bike ride without a set
destination. And I will write what I want to write just for the hell of it.
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