Writer Pep Talk

or The Author is in Need of a Little Cheerleading

Thursday. A rather forlorn day if you ask me. Arthur Dent summed it up quite nicely when he claimed that he never could get the hang of Thursdays. They aren’t bad. They aren’t the weekend. They are there and we are thankful.

Still. Do you ever reach a point in your week when you look at your office/workspace/atelier/TBR pile and go, “Meh. Why? What? Where? Who?”

Well, I know I do. And something tells me I’m not alone.

Everyone - especially Creatives - go through those times when they want to just slap off the alarm, roll back over and pretend they’re one with the mattress. Then, when they do get up, they shuffle to the coffee maker, hair defying gravity and socks with resplendent holes allowing the cold of the floorboards to seep in, and clutch their mug like a lifeline to waking.

Why am I doing this again?
Who even cares?
And WHAT, pray tell, am I even doing in the first place?

How can we get passed these times when the Muse goes on holiday and kindly forgets to leave a forwarding address?

Well…ah…the answer, you see, is quite simple. It’s the practice that’s a bit tough in the follow through.

You keep doing what you know to do.

You write.

You draw.

You paint.

You sculpt.

You remeasure for that dress that you’ve made SIXTEEN TIMES and there’s no WAY to make taffeta do whatever it is the client wants it to do.

And most importantly of all :

You do things that feed your soul.

Folklore suggests that the fairy folk (or the sidhe if you’re Irish) were good or bad, kind or evil, meddlesome or helpful depending on how people treated them. Treat them with respect, you’re in the clear. You might even get a little supernatural help here and there. Ignore them, or worse, insult them, well, consider all your milk curdled and your children swapped for hideous changelings.

How does one appease the Fair Folk?

You feed them.

[#TRUTH]

You leave out a bowl of cream, little cakes, a biscuit or three. A thimble full of wine. Some lemon curd on toast. Hawthorn berries and hibiscus flowers in a cup of shimmering spring water, steeped under the light of the first full moon of April.

Silly?

Maybe, but the point is, you feed the creature, the creature offers you their services. And I honestly don’t know many folk tales where the fairies go Mafia and require a favor in return.

(But should they ask, you best say yes. Or you’ll end up imprisoned in a cloven pine or some such…)

When the Muse is AWOL, when you don’t see the point, when you feel you’re screaming into the Void and even the Void isn’t answering, the best thing you can do is pause and feed your creative soul.

Here’s three very simple ways to continue to fuel your dreams and help banish those not-so-nice-voices in your head :

1. Keep a personal journal of your responses to every day life.

   Now, I’m not talking about the ever popular, early FBook days, “I am eating an egg” entry. No one cares. Your future self won’t care. Especially if you can’t figure out that if you touch the screen, it will actually focus on said egg that you are in the act of eating. Just keep a notebook, a sheaf of old Christmas cards, random napkins given to you at the Arby’s drive-thru for the sole purpose of jotting down your general responses to random things. That conversation you overheard at the cafe yesterday? Write it down. The color of your cat’s eyes when they sit against that ghastly orange pillow Aunt Muriel gave you? Write it down. The way your stomach still turns somersaults when your person catches your eye across a crowded bookstore. Yeah. Write that down too. At the least, they’ll be lovely little vignettes to make you pause and smile when you re-read them when you’re older. At the best, they’ll make for charming details in your next WIP.

2. Read the Great Books.

   But I don’t WANT to read “War and Peace”! I mean, OK. Sure. Fine. But maybe you should at least Google the Spark Notes, ‘k? The Classics are classics for a reason. They speak to us as humans. They talk of the human condition in every conceivable situation. True, those situations are almost always dreary, negative and depressing, but we’ve been there. Maybe you’re there now. And you’re not alone. And it’s not so much about the content, it’s about the language, about the nuancedword play, the dialogue, the long, flowery paragraphs that wax eloquently and liberally about the religious symbolism between man’s need for God and his quest for a great, white whale. These works help us become better writers, help us assimilate our experience better and cultivate better language gardens from which to harvest our own poetical prose. Sometimes all you need to refill your well is to read beautiful art that has stood the test of time.

3. Write every day.

   “Wait a second, Jen. I’m sick of writing. I don’t want to write any more. No one cares. No one’s listening. I’m tired of pouring my soul out through my fingers only to get the proverbial pat on the head of tolerance from my long-suffering family.” Yeah. I get it. So am I. So is everyone who ever sits down to write a haiku much less a novel. But here’s the thing. The Muse won’t show up when you want them. They won’t wander in, straddle the cane chair in the corner and say, “Ah, here I am. Here’s an idea. Let’s get to it. Chop chop!” I mean, yeah, sure, sometimes they do. When you’re in the shower. When you’re behind on a deadline. At 3 am on a school night. Still. My point is, if you’re a writer, you write. If you don’t feel like writing, you write. If all you can do is sit at your desk for five minutes every day for a week and write, “I don’t know what to write” over and over and over again then fine. Do that. Because I guarantee you, one day you’re going to write “I don’t know what to write” and suddenly the gates will open and you’ll be attacked by an entire legion of story. And you’ll be there to welcome them. Because you showed up. If you aren’t there, that story will flitter away. The Muse will snore loudly. Maybe he’ll go back to Botswana. Show up. Write. Every. Day.

Nothing in this newsletter is ground breaking. Nothing I’ve written today is NEW or IMPROVED. In fact, I’d be willing to bed you’ve all heard it before. That, my friends, means the advice is CLASSIC. Tried and true. It works.

Keep an honest, unpublished journal.

Read great works of literature, books that make you swoon, that make you think, that make your head hurt. That make you pause, wide-eyed, gasping, “Wow.”

And Write. Every. Single. Day.

I promise you you’ll get back on track. It might not be today. It might not be next week. But it will happen. And when it does, you’ll have so much to draw from.

Who knows where that inspiration will lead?

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What about you? What do you do to get back into the groove of writing? What happens when you just don’t feel like being creative? While it’s good to take a break now and then, it’s also good to recognize when you need to plow through and keep going. It’s also good to realize when you just need to refill your creative well. What do you do to keep the Muse happy? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Happy Thursday,
xo Jen