Writing Tools

This year, my participation in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) was on-again, off-again. Still, in addition to my other writing, I wrote 18,001 words, finishing the rough draft of one screenplay and delving into a children’s novel. I’m very pleased with the results, although some year I’d like to be an official NaNoWriMo winner (which means writing an entire novel of at least 50,000 words during November). I especially enjoy the communal aspect of NaNo writing–a number of writers I know participate in NaNoWriMo and we support each other through the online forums and even local get-togethers, though this year I didn’t make it to any local write-ins. But I reconnected with and met some cool writers online, and I’m looking forward to continuing to support each other in our writing goals over the coming year.

This year, one of the pep talks was posted by one of my favorite fantasy writers, Brandon Sanderson. (Brandon also does a really cool writing podcast called Writing Excuses with several other writers that I find helpful and enjoyable.) I appreciated hearing his perspective on using NaNoWriMo as the writing tool it is for us to move forward in our writing. If you’ve ever thought of doing NaNoWriMo, or are interested in developing your writer’s toolbox, his article and approach are well worth the read.

What did I learn from NaNoWriMo this year? I learned more about juggling other events and responsibilities with intensive writing, being more flexible about when I take writing time. For me, a consistent writing schedule is a really helpful practice for me. But sometimes that’s not possible. So this month, I tried to just sneak in a few minutes of writing on days that I really didn’t have a solid block of time. And that was very helpful, so that when I did get back to my writing project after being away for a few days, I was still “connected” and could get back into the writing more quickly.

This month, I’ll let the writing I did during NaNoWriMo rest so that I can edit it with fresh eyes in the new year. Starting today, I’m getting back to writing my next book on the Eucharist.

I’m doing so much writing in these days, I haven’t had as much energy to blog. Then, this morning I realized I was too focused on producing and needed to step back for a few minutes. So this is me “stepping back” and thinking a bit about my own writing process and some writing tools that I’ve found helpful.

I am currently reading Writing as a Sacred Path: A Practical Guide to Writing with Passion and Purpose, by Jill Jepson. I was drawn to the book because the author sees the connection between writing and spiritual experiences. The wealth of the book is that it draws from various spiritual traditions, but it also offers a lot of opportunity for writing practice or exercises. Like most books on writing, only a couple of the exercises really inspire me (I’m only halfway through the book), but I suspect that I will go back to those few exercises many times.

It can be expensive to collect writing books. So years ago, I started a notebook where I copied down from library books the writing exercises that I knew I’d want to go back to. Here is a short summary of some of my favorites:

From Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
-Blasting through blocks (in Week 9, Recovering a Sense of Compassion). Cameron encourages the reader to list any resentments, doubts or fear that we have about the project we’re working on. And then commit to the project anyway. In another place, she encourages the reader to answer all of the fears and doubts that arise–and I usually do that as well. It’s excellent when I’m tiptoeing around a project instead of delving in.

From A Writer’s Life by Eric Maisel
His One-Day Writing Workshop gives a structure for a full day of writing. I’ve never stuck to the full schedule, but starting it has always gotten me into a full day of writing.

From Deep Writing by Eric Maisel
“Funny Mirrors” is a way Maisel suggests evaluating your work. It’s a wonderful exercise to do if you find yourself either being hypercritical or afraid to correct any part of your writing because the whole thing might collapse. Included in his list of mirrors before which we can hold up our work are: The Mirror of the Adjective, The Mirror of the Original Idea, The Mirror of the Ideal Reader, the Mirror of Narrative Flow….and he encourages you to make up your own mirrors, which I have also done.

And these are two that I want to try from Writing as a Sacred Path by Jill Jepson (pp. 12-16). Both exercises focus on fostering creativity. In the first, “Receiving Stories from Every Day Life,” Jepson suggests looking over our day in the evening, and picking one event from the day–it doesn’t need to be a dramatic one. Then, she gives a list of questions that help us to explore it narratively and imaginatively (through characters involved, impact, details, etc.). Then she encourages us to write it in some form. The second exercise is “Discovering Story Seeds in the World Around You.” She suggests setting your intention in the morning that you will collect a certain number of “story seeds”–which are not story ideas, but simpler, from which story ideas might grow. Then she suggests picking one and turning it into a story.

I have a copy of my favorite book of writing exercises: Making a Good Writer Great by Linda Seger. Years ago, I was really excited to hear Linda speak at a creativity conference sponsored by the Act One: Writing for Hollywood program. Rather than a potpourri of writing ideas, in this book Seger encourages the writer to develop her own personal set of tools and mentality that will nurture his or her unique writing life.