Make the Occasional Side-Trip

There's much to be said for the adage, "To be a good writer, you must write." Yet, it's also true that to continue to write well, you must take time to renew your energy source, to recharge your spirit. Sometimes, the very prescription for becoming a better writer is to stop writing for a while and refill your personal well with new experiences.

If you intersperse your diligent spells of creative writing with extended rest, relaxing moments, recreational activities, and interactions with other people, these latter pursuits can often improve your literary skills as much as direct study.

This week, I've been away from my desk, out of town, and in another country---until this afternoon, I haven't written more than a sentence, nor edited the tiniest manuscript. Rather, I've been busily moving about, thinking new thoughts, discussing ideas with some dear people I don't get to speak with nearly enough. I've met numerous strangers, imagined possible details of their lives, wondered which might appear in future ruminations or as characters in my next piece of fiction or poetry.

Not writing this week hasn't changed me for the worse. I haven't slipped in my ability; I've added something "new and different" to my state of being, and it will come home with me. "Different" will show up in my work here and there, injecting freshness into my perspective.

It's okay to stop writing in the middle of a project---for a little while---especially when it's a big or stressful project. Even when you're on a tight deadline, you've got to allow yourself to break the tension now and then. If you let yourself rejuvenate both body and mind, you will reduce the amount of stress that can show up in your writing. A scene should only feel tense when the characters in it feel tense, not because the writer was all keyed up.

If you just can't get away to the mountains or the beach, or visit with friends or family while you're working on a writing project, at least you can help yourself to a micro-vacation. Every couple of hours, stand up from your desk and stretch. Shake out your limbs. Physically get away from the manuscript you're immersed in by walking as far away that you can get, in your house, apartment or office, from your computer or other writing equipment or device. Stroll your garden or yard for 5-10 minutes. Strum an instrument for 15. Take a warm bath, eat a cookie, walk around the block. Stroke your cat/dog/hamster/cockroach/pet rock. Just don't write for a quarter-to-a-half of an hour.

When you come back to your creative work, you'll feel different: looser, dreamier, excited, maybe contemplative. Whatever you feel, it will be a change from what you felt before you walked away, and this will change the way you think, and write, if even just mildly. It's enough to change the flow of current in your thinking and writing to your advantage. It will subconsciously bring some of what you did or saw or thought while you weren't writing to your continued writing.

Now it's time for me to attend to non-writing tasks again--- there's a river in the Skagit Valley that's calling me to commune with it while the sun's still above the cedars. When I return home, I'll bring a piece of that communion back, knowing it will improve my ability to write about all sorts of other things that just needed a bit of the river in them.

#Hanninen #waystoimprovewriting #characterdevelopment #reducingstress