Refreshing Your Writing Practice, Part 2
Last month, we explored community as a way to refresh a writing practice. Here’s my second idea, if you need a kickstart: mix up your practice. Change stuff. Like . . .
Where you write
When you write
What you use to write
How you enter and end your writing session
I have this kinda weird formula to help me sustain my practice, evolved from years of studying how I write and paint most often and most satisfyingly. I’ll introduce it to you below.
PEDS
Broken into four stages, it becomes an acronym: PEDS. Each stage offers huge benefits towards sustaining my practice. When I pay good attention to each, I stay with my creativity.
Also helpful in a dry period, when I can’t move forward with a project. I review these stages. I’m usually neglecting one.
P is prepare. This has to do with how you set up your space, get permission for your writing time from self or family, decide how many minutes or words you’ll go for, whether your writing equipment is in working order. It’s not the actual writing time. It’s the set up, externally.
E is enter. This is what you do to start. Some writers read a poem. Some read their writing from the last session or feedback from a reader. Some light a candle, create an intention, listen to music, do a few stretches. Some do a freewrite. It’s the beginning of your writing time, and if it’s planned or routine, there’s no hesitation about starting.
D is deepen. For me, this is the actual process of writing where I am not paying attention to anything else. I’ve entered my work for the day and now my only job is to go deeper into it and be surprised (hopefully) by what I find.
S is serve. When we end our writing time, what do we do with that energy? My feeling is that it needs to go out into our lives, to enhance them in some way. Creativity is a huge gift to those who use it and it can change the world. This last stage might be reporting to a writing group or friend about how you did or what you discovered, sharing with a spouse or friend, writing a blog post, getting involved with some action in your community to spread the wealth of your creative practice.
Prepare
When I’m in the flow of daily creative practice, my preparations are minimal. I grab my phone to make notes of a story idea. I dictate an image onto a text. I forward myself a link of interesting research. In other words, I’m always in prepare mode and I am living 24/7 in the flow of my creativity. It’s the best.
But when the world is too much, hammering on me, I get out of this flow. So I have a routine to prepare. Here are the questions I use:
When am I going to write or paint today? What time to what time?
Where will I best do it?
Do I need to negotiate this time with my family? When will that happen?
What do I need to have on hand to do the work—am I set up with supplies, etc.?
If I can answer all those questions, I’m doing well with this stage. All I have to do is enact the answers. If I don’t create this space and time and permission, the drama of others (life) gets in the way. It’s very easy to not do what I want to do.
We all have times that it’s impossible to prepare—an emergency happens and we have to drop everything and deal with it. But I’ve found that if the flow of preparation is already in place, it’s easier to return to art and writing afterwards. Sure, it takes effort. But I’ve got the external structure so I can just step into it.
Enter
It also helps to have your first step into writing already planned. How I enter depends on what I’m working on. Here are some tips I’ve learned.
For years I used different books on freewriting exercises for writers as my first step every writing session. What If? Writing Down the Bones. I’d set the timer and free write for 10 minutes. It was similar to stretching before a workout. It worked to get the creative brain engaged.
Another technique I’ve used is called “linkage.” Basically you leave the last sentence unfinished when you stop writing the previous session. Boy, does the mind hate that vacuum but it is super easy to enter again the next day.
If I’m revising, I’ll read one suggestion from feedback and try to work with it.
Or I’ll look at my list of revision notes and pick the smallest one to try.
I also have great luck using images to enter. I make a character collage and hang it on my writing room wall or post on my desktop, then I write to one of the images. A super way to jumpstart.
Deepen
Sometimes, I’m so jazzed about my writing time, I have so many ideas to try, and my preparation is done already, I breeze through the Enter stage right into Deepen. I don’t need warmup. I’ve been thinking about the story for days or overnight and I jump right in. To me, this is where the real joy of creating comes from—when I’m past the preparation and the entering stages and I’m swimming in the bliss of the story or painting.
A few great questions to ask yourself, if you aren’t able to deepen because of negative thoughts or self-doubts. And to keep this stage lively even if you’re enjoying it.
If I pause, why? If I stop, what was happening or what was I thinking about the work just before? Often this gives me the clue of a new skill I recognize I need or the past voice of the inner critic coming through to make me doubt myself.
If I feel a moment of “stale” while in this stage, can I mess things up some? Can I rewrite a paragraph or sentence completely differently? Can I work on a different painting for a few minutes?
If I want to end, ask what one more step can I take to create the linkage to next session (as mentioned above). Don’t leave when it’s going bad. Leave when it’s going good. Can I leave things messy? Can I jot a few random ideas or make a change in a painting that begs me to come back and work on it again?
Serve
This is a fairly unusual part of my practice, but I know some of you will understand immediately what I mean by taking the creative energy and outflowing it to your life. There are a lot of people who need to touch what we encounter during our writing or creative times. A lot who are starving for artistic expression but can’t manage to have it.
After I finish painting, for instance, I’ll often text a friend or go to a store just to be around people. I buy flowers at our local grocery store on the way home. Just walking through the store with flowers in my arms engenders some stares, I’ll tell you, but it also makes people smile.
At home, I use this final stage to serve my family. Take the dogs for a nice walk. Something to outflow all that I’ve gained.
Your weekly writing exercise
Look over the four stages to a sustainable writing or other creative practice. Which ones do you do well? Which are missing, for you?
This week, try to build strength in or at least explore one of your less successful stages.
What questions do you have about this idea? What have you already succeeded with?Photo by Clark Young on Unsplash