Struggling to Live a Creative Life in a Stressful World
Let this image engage your muse. Write a paragraph, a short story, a poem, a memory, a journal entry…or whatever you feel inspired to create. And share your creations in the comments if you’d like!
Cemetery of Time
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The exercise below is one of my recent Creative Bursts. The Creative Bursts are fun, 15-minute play breaks designed to help get your creativity flowing. They encompass writing, drawing, doodling, dancing, wordplay, singing and more. And they’re free! If you’re not receiving them yet, click here to sign up!
You stumble upon a restaurant that serves everything you want in life. What’s on the menu? Get creative as you name the dishes.
Here’s what people are saying about the Creative Bursts:
“Your Creative Bursts Rock! Love the creativity exercises. They are fantastic.” ~Andrew, Brisbane, Australia
“Love these prompts!” ~Sarah, California, USA
“Thank you for the Bursts, they are hopefully going to restore some sanity!” ~Hannah, United Kingdom
“I LOVE your Creative Bursts! They really spark my imagination.” ~Christopher, Maryland, USA
Click here to download your free Creative Bursts workbook and sign up for more Bursts in your inbox twice a week!
I’m rerunning this popular post because I know some of you out there want to know how to capture your shower and bath musings!
Okay, I know I gave this post a provocative title. Provocative, but not misleading, because I’m going to talk about writing while in the shower.
In my post Friday, I mentioned dragging my Muse into the shower to sneak in a creative moment. Writing in the shower came up in the comments to that post, too. Since it was on my mind, I did a little Internet research about shower writing. And I found products!
I’ve always written in my head in the shower, repeating a few sentences over and over until I’m finished so I won’t forget them. It never occurred to me to actually physically write in the shower. But apparently it occurred to other people, because you can buy the items below to help with your shower-time creativity.
Links to Shower Writing Tools:
Erasable Shower Note Tablet: Like a small whiteboard, with waterproof crayons, a crayon caddy and suction cup mounts included.
AquaNotes: A pad of waterproof paper with suction cups to attach it to the shower wall. Comes with a water-resistant cedar pencil and a suction cup pencil holder. You can buy the regular AquaNotes or the “LoveNotes” to leave a message for that special someone in the shower!
Underwater Dive Slate: A search for “dive slate” turns up dozens of different dive slates made for scuba divers. But they’ll work fine in the shower, too.
These are products designed for construction professionals who need to take notes in all sorts of weather:
All-Weather Pen: A ballpoint pen that “writes on wet paper, and upside down in temperatures from -50 to 400°F.” I think at 400°F, the pen might be fine, but the writer would have melted into a puddle!
I also found advice to use kids’ washable crayons or old-fashioned grease pencils to write on tile shower walls.
So choose your method and don’t let a little water dampen your creativity!
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Let this image engage your muse. Write a paragraph, a short story, a poem, a memory, a journal entry…or whatever you feel inspired to create. And share your creations in the comments if you’d like!
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And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
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photo by Emlyn Addison
Once again, I’d like to share some inspiring posts I’ve read lately about creativity, writing and life:
Daily Rituals. In this fascinating piece, Mason Currey talks about how famous writers, artists and other creative people find time each day to do their work. This is the first installment of a 3-week series on Slate, so you might want to keep checking back.
Nine of the Best Ways to Boost Creative Thinking. Gregory Ciotti offers up some great ideas to help you become more creative. (from Lifehacker)
25 Insights on Becoming a Better Writer. A host of writers — including PD James, Zadie Smith, Kurt Vonnegut, Haruki Murakami, Jennifer Egan, Neil Gaiman, and many others – offer a range of tips on improving your writing. (by Jocelyn K. Glei on Daily Good)
Stained Glass Window Exercise. A fun and simple creative project from Nature Coach Michelle Hedgecock. This one got my creative juices flowing!
Kids, Creative Blocks, and Adult Creativity and 10 More Ways to be Creative Like a Kid. In these two pieces, Mike Brown discusses amusing ways to keep your creative inner child satisfied. His thesis: “One way for adults to attack creative blocks or improve creativity in general is to revert to doing what kids – who are often at the creative pinnacles of their lives – do naturally.”
6 Techniques to Ignite Your Inner Creativity and Passion. Ronald Alexander discusses ways to open up to your core creativity in this inspiring article from The Huffington Post.
I hope you enjoy these wonderful creative tidbits as much as I did!
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And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE! (To learn more, click here)
DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE! (To learn more, click here)
Quick post today to direct you to this wonderful collection of talks on creativity: TED’s Creative Spark Playlist.
I haven’t watched all of these, but the ones I’ve seen have been fantastic. The 10 included talks are:
So, if you need a little inspiration, check out one (or all) of these wildly creative thinkers as they share their perspectives on creativity.
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Let this image engage your muse. Write a paragraph, a short story, a poem, a memory, a journal entry…or whatever you feel inspired to create. And share your creations in the comments if you’d like!
DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE! (To learn more, click here)
Every year, I rerun my popular 4-part series on perfectionism and how to overcome its potentially crippling effects on creativity. Here’s the final installment:
(To read the previous installments, click here for Part 1, here for Part 2, and here for Part 3.)
Have you ever written a story (an essay, a screenplay, a poem…), then decided it wasn’t worth the price of the paper and ink you wasted on it? Have you imagined people laughing when they read it (and not in a good way)? Have you believed your work had no sparkle, was boring, was not noteworthy?
If you’re a writer, the answer is probably yes.
In my last post about perfectionism, I discussed the importance of creating even when your life isn’t in perfect order. But what if you’ve managed to write something you don’t believe deserves to see the light of day?
Here’s a little secret my Inner Perfectionist tried to hide from me for a long time: a lot of what you write will be bad. Or uninspired. Boring. Or half-finished because the idea fizzled out. And that’s okay. It’s not only okay, it’s part of the creative process.
Let me repeat that, because it’s important: Producing bad writing is part of the creative process.
It’s easy to imagine our favorite authors sitting at their desks, inspired every day while they effortlessly write out the masterpieces we love, barely changing a comma once they’ve finished. But it’s important to remember they struggled just as much as we do.
Here’s a little proof:
Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper. —Isaac Bashevis Singer
Easy reading is damn hard writing. —Nathaniel Hawthorne
Every writer I know has trouble writing. —Joseph Heller
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. —George Orwell
The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with. —William Faulkner
I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within. —Gustave Flaubert
I could go on, but you get the point.
Here’s the only way I know to combat this problem: Allow yourself to make mistakes. Write with abandon. Fail spectacularly.
An editor once told me my submission to his literary journal was the silliest story he’d ever read. Ouch! My own Inner Perfectionist couldn’t have dismissed my efforts with more derision. But I didn’t let his comments stop me. Okay, I may have cried a little. Or cursed the editor for his abysmal judgment. It’s possible I stuck a few pins into my literary journal editor-shaped voodoo doll.
But then I picked myself up, applied some ego salve to my bruised psyche, and raised my pen again. Because here’s what I’ve learned: Creative gems live in the middle of piles of dreck. Diamonds aren’t mined from pits lined with sheets of diamond, and gold isn’t panned from rivers of gold. These things are more valuable because they are rarer than the rock and the water they inhabit. You have to get your hands dirty, covered in grit and slime, to pull out a gem. It’s the same with a work of art.
The only way to write a good story (essay, screenplay, poem…) is to write lots of bad stories (essays, screenplays, poems…). Embrace your mediocre writing and your pieces that fizzle out. Because the more rock you chisel through, the closer you get to a diamond. And once you start finding diamonds, a funny thing happens. Your percentage of dirty rock to diamond shifts, and you gradually begin to find more precious things within your huge pile of work.
It’s never going to be all diamonds and no rock. Not even close. But as you continue to work at your craft, you learn to spot the diamonds more easily and to mine them faster. You learn to polish dull gems and make them shine. And, perhaps most important, you finally learn to stop hating the rock. Because you realize it’s just a layer you must get through in order to reach the jewel within.
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Every year, I rerun my popular 4-part series on perfectionism and how to overcome its potentially crippling effects on creativity. Here’s the third installment:
(To read the first installment, click here. For the second installment, click here.)
I’ve been thinking (and writing) a lot about perfectionism lately, and I can see two particular ways in which it has hampered my creativity over the years: Needing my life to be in perfect order before I can really devote time to writing. And feeling my writing isn’t good enough, because it’s not perfect. In this post, I’m going to talk about the first issue, and I’ll discuss the second one next time.
Here are some things I’ve learned: Life is messy. Creativity is messy. Muses come to you at the worst possible times. They arrive when you can’t possibly listen to them because your world will fall apart if you don’t finish the big work project/get another hour of sleep/re-grout the shower right now. They arrive when you’re tired and cranky and you don’t care about their amazing creative insights. They come to you straight from a Paris café on a sunny afternoon where they were just biting into the perfect tarte au citron. They arrive with crumbs still falling down their chins because they had a brilliant idea for you that couldn’t wait. They expect you to drop everything and listen to their inspirational comments.
Alternately, muses are good at vanishing. They disappear just when you want them the most. They start pouting and storm off right in the middle of a wonderful creative session. Or they suddenly have pressing business elsewhere and won’t stay, even when you beg. They abandon you, leaving you astonished because you thought things were going so well. Or they never arrive at all. They stop taking your calls and won’t tell you why.
And here’s the thing. If you want to create, you must create anyway. If you want to write or paint or sculpt or make music, you must write or paint or sculpt or make music in spite of everything. You must do it when your muse is acting up, and you must do it when you’re cranky, and you must do it when you’re busy.
Because if you don’t write, you’re not writing. If you don’t paint, you’re not painting. In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard said “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” If you don’t spend your days creating, you’re not spending your life creating.
Not to put any pressure on you or anything.
Something else I’ve learned—and it’s taken me years to truly understand this—is that creativity can take place in tiny bites. You don’t have to set aside big chunks of time to write a novel. You don’t have to complete a short story in one sitting. Or a poem. Even a haiku.
I once completed a series of stories by setting aside 15 minutes a day when I was working full time and freelancing on the side and felt swamped all the time. I began stopping at a sheltered bench or a hotel lobby every morning after my commute downtown. I wrote for 15 minutes before heading to my office. Once I got into the flow of this daily writing habit, I was amazed at how much I could get done in such a short time.
You can spend five minutes creating metaphors twice a week, spend 15 minutes working on your memoir another three days, write a couple of lines in your head once or twice in the shower. If you engage in these small moments of creativity most days, a flow begins.
Soon the metaphor about the grandfather clock slips into your memoir as a pithy reflection on your family’s tendency to eat breakfast food at dinnertime. The quick description you wrote in your head while showering becomes a narrative about the bully who harassed you on your first day of elementary school. Before you know it, you’ve written the first five chapters of your book.
It really does work. And your days will feel richer because you’ve dotted them with creativity, and forced your Inner Perfectionist to go away and leave you alone.
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Every year, I rerun my popular 4-part series on perfectionism and how to overcome its potentially crippling effects on creativity. Here’s the first installment:
I currently have a half-written blog post about perfectionism and its destructive effect on creativity. For some reason, every time I get back to it, I’m interrupted…hmmm…there’s that stressful life making things difficult again…
Until I can finish up what I have to say about the evils of perfectionism, I’m going to share a few words of wisdom on the topic from other creative people:
A lot of disappointed people have been left standing on the street corner waiting for the bus marked Perfection.
~Donald KennedyPerfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough – that we should try again.
~Julia CameronThe thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.
~Anna QuindlenThe maxim ‘Nothing but perfection’ may be spelled ‘Paralysis’.
~Winston ChurchillHave no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.
~Salvador DaliAn artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.
~Eugene DelacroixPerfectionism is the enemy of creation…
~John Updike
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I’m re-running this post with my musings on pain and creativity because it’s been a popular one that many people have connected with… (originally posted May 25, 2010):
Life is always happening. Pain and pleasure and heartbreak and happiness fluctuate for all of us in a never-ending cycle. Don’t allow the difficult times to take away your creative spark. Keeping your muse in your life during periods of emotional and physical pain helps you stay grounded and brings a positive note into a dark time.
I’ve been having a rough month. It started with a visit to my father, who has early-onset dementia that has now progressed to the latter stages. I wanted to ensure I’d see him at least once more before he forgets who I am.
My month has continued with a benign cyst on my head that’s become infected and excruciatingly painful. After toughing it out for a week, I’ve finally accepted the obvious truth that it won’t magically disappear and I’m having minor surgery to have it removed later today.
I’ll never regret the visit to my father, but, of course, it’s painful to see my once-brilliant scientist dad struggling to make mental connections and speaking nonsensically. The trip also brought up emotional pain over the difficult relationship I had with him, now that he no longer exists as that person.
My physical pain seems easier to endure, except for the fact that it makes thinking, working, writing, creating—and even washing my hair—much more difficult. This may become worse before it gets better, after my scalp meets a scalpel this afternoon (ouch!).
But, though intense for me now, these events don’t come close to being the worst physical or emotional pain I’ve felt. We all endure pain in many forms throughout our lives. And, as I experience this rough patch, I find myself remembering yet again the importance of remaining creative through the bad times.
Because if I let go of one of the things that gives me the most pleasure in my life—the creativity that makes me who I am—then I make a bad period even worse.
So I’m offering some ideas for staying creative through painful periods in your life:
Accept the pain. Pain is part of life. We all experience both physical and emotional pain. Not accepting this leads to more suffering because your angst about being in pain adds an additional layer of emotional pain to what you’re already experiencing. And the energy you use being upset, angry, discouraged, etc., about your pain could be used instead for healing and creativity.
Dial down your goals. During a difficult period, you may not be able to spend the amount of time or energy on creative pursuits that you normally do, or that you feel you should. This is okay. Try to write for just 15 minutes. Or even 5 minutes. Anything you do will give your muse some creative juice.
But don’t abandon your creative life. If you put off creativity every time life gets hard, you will only live half a creative life. Creativity adds a positive note to your days when things are tough. Don’t let it be a casualty of your pain.
Show yourself compassion. Don’t add to your suffering by beating yourself up for not sticking to your creative goals. Forget about your creative performance for the last day/week/month/year. Today is all that matters. Just perform a small creative act today.
Write about your pain. Writing about your emotional or physical pain can help with healing or can just lead to some fantastic writing when you dig deep into your suffering and allow it to exist on the page. Try writing a journal entry, an essay, a fictional piece or a poem about your experience.
Don’t write about your pain. Sometimes writing about something completely unrelated to your life is the best way to let go of your pain and embrace your creativity. Try writing a fantasy/sci-fi story or writing about characters whose lives engage you.
Do something completely different. If writing is your primary creative outlet, try making something from clay, gardening, knitting, singing…whatever inspires you. Sometimes life difficulties lead us down new paths, either for the moment or for the long haul.
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Let this image engage your muse. Write a paragraph, a short story, a poem, a memory, a journal entry…or whatever you feel inspired to create. And share your creations in the comments if you’d like!
DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE! (To learn more, click here)
The exercise below is one of my recent Creative Bursts. The Creative Bursts are fun, 15-minute play breaks designed to help get your creativity flowing. They encompass writing, drawing, doodling, dancing, wordplay, singing and more. And they’re free! If you’re not receiving them yet, click here to sign up!
You have a dragon chained in your basement. Who is she, and why does she want to get out? Does she want to confront you with her fire-breath or does she want to fly away? Write or draw whatever comes up for you. Be serious, playful or whimsical. Or all three!
Here’s what people are saying about the Creative Bursts:
“Your Creative Bursts Rock! Love the creativity exercises. They are fantastic.” ~Andrew, Brisbane, Australia
“Love these prompts!” ~Sarah, California, USA
“Thank you for the Bursts, they are hopefully going to restore some sanity!” ~Hannah, United Kingdom
“I LOVE your Creative Bursts! They really spark my imagination.” ~Christopher, Maryland, USA
Click here to download your free Creative Bursts workbook and sign up for more Bursts in your inbox twice a week!
*In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’m rerunning this popular post.
It may seem obvious that feelings of love go hand-in-hand with heightened creativity. Artists of every type have created masterpieces motivated by love: paintings, plays, songs, sculpture. I’ve certainly written my share of love-inspired essays, fictional scenes and other pieces. Starting with some very bad poetry at the age of 15 when the boy I was smitten with moved on.
But when psychologists decided to study this connection, they found both that love inspires creativity and that lust inspires analytical thinking. Two different studies prompted students to think of either romantic or sexual situations. Afterwards, the subjects who’d been thinking of sex performed better on logic problems, while the students reflecting on love were best at solving problems requiring creativity.
The researchers concluded that love causes people to think about long-term goals, which involves taking an imaginative leap. This enhances holistic thinking and creativity. Lust, on the other hand, inspires dedication to more short term pursuits, thereby heightening analytical ability.
I can’t sum up this blog post any better than this Pacific Standard article about the research did: “This explains the relative paucity of Odes to a One-Night Stand.”
Except to say if you’re feeling creatively blocked, why not kiss someone you love? Or, as researchers had subjects do in one of the studies, imagine taking a long walk with your beloved. It just might set your muse on fire.
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I just came across this post from a couple of years ago, and I’m re-posting it to offer some ideas for celebrating your muse this Valentine’s Day!
We like to celebrate our special loved ones on Valentine’s Day, so why not give our muses a little Valentine’s Day love, too? I made this collage and included a Rumi poem as an offering to my Muse for all the inspiration in the last year.
You could also write a poem, a love letter, a couple of sentences, a haiku, a short story or anything else to celebrate your muse.
You could create a happy inspiration dance, paint a picture of your muse, write a celebratory song, or take a contemplative walk with your muse by your side.
How will you celebrate your muse this Valentine’s Day?
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Let this image engage your muse. Write a paragraph, a short story, a poem, a memory, a journal entry…or whatever you feel inspired to create. And share your creations in the comments if you’d like!
DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE! (To learn more, click here)
January can be a tough month: recovering from holiday overwhelm; dealing with sniffles, flu, and cold weather; trying to get back into the swing of things. Sometimes it feels impossible to be creative. So it seems like the perfect time to rerun this post about one of my favorite quick creative exercises. Even when you’re not feeling well and have no time, you CAN nourish your creative soul with this five-minute play break.
If you’d like to try your hand at the metaphor exercise, check out the starter items in the Tiny Packages section of the Readers’ Sandbox—or come up with your own. And, as always, I love it when you share your creative endeavors here!
Sandbox Challenge #1: A Camel is a Walking Sand Dune:
I’ve been engaged in several rounds of a grueling match with the Human Head Pounder, the Vicious Throat Scratcher, the Phlegmy Cough Monster and a few of their other unpleasant pals. Now that I’ve gotten them halfway back into their caves, I’ve started thinking about how to stay creative when I’m sick. When deadlines start moaning because it looks like I may not meet them. When unpaid bills and undone chores begin growing horns and making increasingly scary noises. When the words in my brain stick together like swollen, overcooked pasta.
Then I remembered that a camel is a walking sand dune.
It’s a metaphor exercise I developed for myself during a period of intense busy-ness that had me nearly crying with my inability to find time for creativity. In order to calm myself down, I decided I could take FIVE MINUTES before bed every night for creativity.
Here’s what I did: I carried a small notebook with me, and during the day, I would jot down a few items, like “music blasting from a passing car,” “ocean waves,” “a black cat,” “a waterfall.”
Then, in those five minutes before bed, I would create metaphors for some of the things I’d written:
Music blasting from a passing car is a 30-second parade.
Waves are arpeggios on the ocean.
A black cat is a soft shadow.
A waterfall is long hair falling down a woman’s back.
I find this a wonderful exercise, because it sparks my creative imagination even when I have only a couple of tired minutes. And some of the metaphors I’ve created in these stolen moments have found their way into my stories and essays. I still keep a small notebook with starter items always ready to be turned into metaphors.
I’m going to begin issuing small writing challenges here. These will be geared toward the concept of this blog—that creativity can take place in tiny found moments—so none of them should take very long.
For this first challenge, write a metaphor/metaphors like the ones I’ve discussed here. Post your answers in the Tiny Packages section of the Readers’ Sandbox. I’ve left some starter items there, or you can come up with your own.
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If you’re gearing up for a creative 2013 (or already feeling bogged down and un-creative), I highly recommend checking out Leonie Dawson’s Create Your Incredible Year Workbook, Planner & Calendar.
I’ve used it for the last two years, and it’s really helped me create magic in my life as I’ve continued to move deeper into my creativity and into having a creative life that fully engages me. I don’t usually mention products on this blog, but I love this one! It’s helped change my life. This year, Leonie is offering two workbooks: both the Life Workbook she’s been offering for a few years, and a Business Workbook as well. (The cost is only $9.95 each or $17.90 for both.)
The workbooks use simple yet powerful techniques to help you not only dream your biggest dreams and set your goals, but to actually make them happen. What I like most about these techniques is that they are creative, non-linear and fun. You’re encouraged to work through your planning and goals in whatever way makes sense for you, so it’s not overwhelming. Last year, I spent time throughout the entire twelve months working through various parts of the workbook.
If this sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend you check it out by clicking here. And I’m sending best wishes for a creative and magical 2013 to everyone who’s reading this!
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Note: the links above are affiliate links, which means I get a little pocket money if you buy through them. Thanks!
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I’m on vacation until January 1. If you’re looking for a little creative fuel, check out these writing exercises I’ve created for this blog in the past. Most of them can be done in 15 minutes—or take longer if you’re inspired!
Use a word pile to create something tasty
Combine a random image and a line of text to create a new writing prompt
Turn your life into a movie, a bubblegum card, a fortune cookie…
Use a clincher detail to create a vivid character in just one sentence
Gather words you find sprinkled throughout your day and turn them into something new
Try one of these five exercises to shake up your muse
Turn something old into a new piece of writing
Use the environment to reflect a significant change in a character’s life
Craft compelling first and last sentences
Try one of these 10 ideas to get your muse out of neutral
Use this prompt as a launching pad into creativity
Compile a thesaurus of the senses
Create a thesaurus of memories
Turn found words and phrases into something new
Transform a creative block into a character (with another example here)
Write a haiku about creativity
Create a faux-history for a random item
Dive into this word pool to write about a physical, emotional or creative journey
For bloggers—create a poem using search engine terms
You’ll also find photo prompts here, and some 5-minute creative quickies here.
And, if you want to work on something larger, write the story of your life with a series of 6-word memoirs.
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Let this image engage your muse. Write a paragraph, a short story, a poem, a memory, a journal entry…or whatever you feel inspired to create. And share your creations in the comments if you’d like!
DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE! (To learn more, click here)
you don’t have time to write for half an hour, spend that time making up stories with a child in your life while buying or wrapping presents.And the last word: don’t beat yourself up if you aren’t able to write as much as you planned. Enjoy your holidays and start fresh in the new year.
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And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE! (To learn more, click here)
Let this image engage your muse. Write a paragraph, a short story, a poem, a memory, a journal entry…or whatever you feel inspired to create. And share your creations in the comments if you’d like!
DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE! (To learn more, click here)
Since we’re right in the middle of National Novel Writing Month, I’m re-running my post about lessons I learned from participating in 2008:
It’s that time again, the one month a year when tens of thousands of crazy people attempt to write a complete novel during the month of November, or National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I did it in 2008 and “won”—meaning I completed the first draft of a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.
While I usually write about fitting brief moments of creativity into the stressful busy-ness of life, it can be eye-opening to pursue a large, ambitious project like this and see where it takes you. So, without further ado, here’s what I learned from the experience:
Failing that, at least get up and stretch a lot.If any NaNoWriMo veterans have other tips, please leave them in the comments section. And best of luck to everyone participating this year!
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