Looking Out the Well

Silence as a writer builds up. As it builds up, its paralyzing. The last two years have made it worse. Even though I felt things welling up inside me to write, I stayed silent. I was scared, and there were voices that were already saying what I was feeling. So, I figured I didn’t need to just be another voice. I could just listen and be encouraged that someone else was stepping up to the plate. In some ways, I was content to watch from the sidelines. However, I still felt like my silence was somehow wrong.

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2019 Goals for the Creative Me

2019 is officially under way, and I’ve given some thought to some goals I have for myself as an introvert and as a writer. Here are some of the things I look to do in 2019 in regards to being creative:

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What to Do With a Dry Well

Have you ever felt like you have nothing left to give? Unless you are a special kind of super-human, you probably have. Everybody has been to that place where things feel dried up. Whether its over-extending or just the demands of every day life, we are all going to come to the place of the dry well.

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The Threat of Bad Titles

This week, I was scrolling through Facebook and found an article that caught my eye. It caught my eye because I didn’t agree with the title. I was tempted to comment immediately without reading the article, but I resisted. I read it, and what I found was a pretty good article.

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Best Times for Productivity

In college, I blew a lot of things off until the last minute. 8 + page papers usually didn’t get finished until the morning of the deadline, and that wasn’t because I was working on it that whole time. It was because I was a procrastinator. I was a professional waster of time, and sometimes I still am. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, unless you want to do something with your life after your 8-5 day job.

I used to think that the best time for me to write was at night. That was when I felt the most creative. Maybe there is a season when that is when the real creative juices come out. However, I think that is also a season when the earliest you have to wake up is 9:30. There comes a point when a person has to wake up at 6:30 or earlier to get ready to be at work 5 days a week, and because the internal clock is set there is no sleeping in past 8:30 on the weekends. These make for full days full of sunshine, however night time is no longer creative time. Night time is bed time.

Writing or doing much of anything at these times almost seems like a waste of energy. Nothing good will probably come out. If something good does come out of it, it’s probably a mistake. To be honest, a person needs to have all their wits about them to be really on top of things. You can’t snooze through writing a chapter of a book or creating a website. That doesn’t create compelling material.

So, this leaves the precious time after work or early in the morning before work to create. Carve out a planned time frame in your weekend to spend working. If you have a vision or a dream, work on it. Devise a game plan to get there. Be creative, but do it during daylight. You’ll have better ideas and won’t be as discouraged if they fall short of expectancy.