3 Ways to Self-Love That Helps Writer's Block

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

I started writing for Medium a couple of days ago because:

 

1) I can get paid and I like getting paid and,

 

2) I have the freedom to write about anything and everything I want, and… still get paid. Which I like. A lot.

 

I can’t do that on this blog because everything I’ve read about blogging recommends getting specific in my topics.

 

Besides it’s evolved to cover writing prompts, novel excerpts, and resurfacing my On the Road journal sent to my friends when I was on my DIY booktour/roadtrip.

 

In other words, this blog is all things Indie Author oriented, and that can be very limiting.

 

Then it occurred to me that the article I wrote this morning could be useful to writers for writer’s block.

 

The article was originally titled: 3 Ways to Self-Love After a Breakup – Or for any other reason you feel like dog s***.

 

Since love and creativity draw from the same well, it made sense to include it here.

 

Besides writers have relationships and go through breakups, and one of the unfortunate side effects of that is…writer’s block.

 

So here is that list of some of my favorite self-love, self-care, feel-goodies that have been very effective at getting me out of my funk…and out of writer’s block.

 

This also ties in to my recent (as in yesterday) article on transforming loneliness into lovely solitude. If you’d like to dash over to Medium to read that article, you can find it here: https://medium.com/@freeflyingpress/how-loneliness-became-blessed-solitude-2ee28f891896

 

By the way, these tips work for everything – not just breakups and writer’s block.

 

1. DANCE

 

I mean dance your butt off for at least 1 hour. This to me is the most powerful of everything I recommend.

Image by Yerson Retamal from Pixabay

 

Dance, besides being really good for your body, releases those endorphins that make you feel all is right in the world.

 

The more your cut loose, the more you shake it, the more likely you’ll get to bliss. And you want to get to bliss when you feel like dog s***.

 

The easiest is to dance in your living room or any other space where you can let go to your favorite playlist of beloved dance songs. And if you don’t have one, make one. Make several.

                       

**My personal recommendations to include in your dance playlist songs that are dominated by percussion/drumming and/or didgeridoo. There is something cathartic about dancing to those instruments that is truly transformative.

           

If you live in an urban area or artsy town that has an Ecstatic Dance – also called 5 Rhythms or Soul Motion – I strongly recommend you start going on the regular. Ecstatic dance sets, if done right, are created to move energy and generate emotional release.

           

Another option is if there is a lot of live music – go out and dance in a crowd.

           

I’m not quick to recommend dance nightclubs because the darkness and the vibe often make me feel alienated and alone in a crowd. On the other hand, I’ve had some great dance offs in nightclubs. I guess it depends on what your jam is. If that works for you, go for it.

 

2. Hiking or Walking

 

What this really comes down to is get outside and move your body.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

 

Ideally, you live someplace close to lots of beauty of forests, streams, and waterfalls. If you can, get out in that beautiful nature and allow it to heal your heart and so

 

If you can’t, find the prettiest neighborhood in your town with lots of trees and flowers and bushes and plants and walk around.

 

Hikes naturally take longer; but if you’re neighborhood walking, go for at least 45 minutes.

 

Do not stroll, walk briskly with long strides and swinging arms and breathe deeply through your nose to take in all the scents.

 

3. Shaking

 

Now, it’s time to get a little freaky because this practice makes you look crazy to the casual observer.

Image by Monikas_Wunderwelt from Pixabay

 

That said, it’s worth it.

 

To deliberate shake your body is amazing therapy. Everything we experience is stored in our bodies - everything from the beautiful to the ugly. But the ugly adds up. By literally shaking every part of your body, you’re shaking it OUT OF YOU.

 

It works even better if you speak gibberish afterwards – sounds that make no sense and form no coherent words for a minute or two. This is the part that makes you look insane. But it works.

 

This was a crucial practice after my recent breakup. I went through a period of feeling numb and disconnected.

 

I became acutely aware of this when I went to a Tantra Festival where everybody else was in a warm, touchy-feely, happy space and I wasn’t. Things shifted after one workshop, when the facilitator started the dance practice with a several minutes of shaking followed by gibberish.

 

That practice made me feel alive again.

Below is a video that shows a basic shaking practice that isn’t too mortifying (although the narrator does a little gibberish towards the end). Go ahead and cut more loose and find other Youtube videos for some ideas. Be sure to put “shaking practice” in your search.

So now you have a few of my secrets. Now that you’ve physically processed your “stuff,” put butt to chair and start writing!

The Writer's Calling

I came to writing through vocabulary.

I’ve written stories since I was a child, with plots and intrigues that flowed easily.

Mimi, my grandmother, swore that I wrote my first story around the age of 7.

But my earliest memories were the weekly writing assignments in 3rd grade.

Mrs. Beatty gave us a list of 10 new vocabulary words every week with daily assignments.

We had to define them, spell them correctly, use them in sentences of our making, and the grand finale was the homework due Friday – writing a longer piece about whatever we wanted, so long as we used all the new words appropriately.

Most of the kids wrote essays. I made up stories with my classmates as characters. I had fun, the kids loved it, and thus, I found my writer’s calling.

Mom said I was the only one of us who willingly did this assignment. Apparently, my brothers hated it.

Simplicity is a beautiful thing.

Those 3rd grade writing assignments were fun. But writing has gotten more complicated and demanding in the years that followed.

Stories and plots flow as much as ever, but I now have a lot of resistance that I didn’t as a 9 year old.

I know this is what I’m meant to do. I have no doubt that writing is my destiny. But it’s hard, painful work.

Writing requires never-ending introspection into who I am and what motivates me, as well as observing people, interpreting who I think they are and figuring out what makes them tick. That’s a lonely job.

Although writing is rewarding, there’s never that sense of completion or that belief that I finally got it exactly right.

Jack Remick, an author and a former writing teacher of mine, said that final manuscript was an illusion.

He said he could go back to “Terminal Weird,” which he said won a lovely award and make improvements on those stories.

(For the record, this was the teacher who taught me the Cage-Escape-Quest-Dragons-Home story structure.)

His point was that you have to decide when a manuscript is good enough to let it go, but it will never be perfect.

How frustrating is that?

As a whole, I believe the writer’s calling is an honor. But like most honorable and worthwhile pursuits, it’s isolating and has many challenges that make me wish I had the calling to be a biologist or something.

That’s pretty kooky, really. I didn’t even like science when I was a kid.

What about some of you? Were you inspired to write as kids? Does inspiration come as easily now? Do you resist or go with the flow? I would love to hear some thoughts and stories.

Writing in Musical Flow

Somebody once told me that if I took the time to learn how to play piano, it would make me a better writer. I think that applies to learning any musical instrument, and frankly, it makes sense. I savor reading anything that evokes a musical pattern in my brain while I’m reading. Some examples for anybody who wants to check out exquisitely beautiful writing are: “Jazz,” by Toni Morrison; just about all of the early work of Truman Capote like “The Grass Harp,” “The Thanksgiving Visitor,” and “A Christmas Memory” – all of these predate “In Cold Blood.”

Years ago, I wrote my breakout story, “Ella Bandita and the Lone Wolf,” to the soundtrack of Amelie. That beautiful, haunting, and romantic music by Yann Tiersen soared through the room as I sat on a bunch of pillows, writing on a wicker occasional table, feeling that excitement when one knows one has landed on something GOOD. “Ella Bandita and the Lone Wolf” was originally written as a fable I could tell in 1½ hours. Since then, the story has expanded to the novel, “Ella Bandita and the Wanderer,” which I tell in excerpts and parts.

Be that as it may, that original story was influenced by the music I listened to as I wrote it. When I read it now, I can still hear the rhythms and melodies of the “Amelie” soundtrack, and all I can think is..

“Wow!”

I did not take Andrew’s advice to learn piano because I don’t gravitate towards that instrument, but someday I might give it a try with guitar. Or something.

In the meantime, I should probably do my final rewrites to music. I’d love for the flow of melody and lyricism to influence my work and make it more beautiful. Wouldn’t you?

So give it a try. I think music also helps with releasing writer’s block.

Adventure or Stability? Writer's Life.

Experience feeds the muse. I’m a strong believer in experience as fodder for writing. I firmly believe writers get their best ideas from those times spent outside the comfort zone – taking risks, learning new things, experimentation, travel, trying new experiences, trying things one thinks one couldn’t do. For writing, it’s even better when things blow up in one’s face because chances are there will be a story to tell later. All these experiences can and will pass through the funnel of our conscious and unconscious mind and the result could always end up as wonderful fiction.

I’ve been blessed with many unique experiences because I’ve made unusual choices in my life. I’ve taken a lot of chances, embarrassed myself more often than I like to admit, suffered plenty, and tried to make sense of it all. Most scenarios did not work out in my favor. But I found inspiration in those moments of mortification and pieces of pain. I also discovered that although I may have had the fleeting wish to die of embarrassment, none of that killed me, or my sense of self.

Yet when it comes to being productive, I have recently found that stability has made me more productive. Right now, I’m engaged, have a stepdaughter, and 5 cats. My traveling is in-state most of the time, and my escapades tend to be shorter in duration. In other words, my life is not as exciting as it used to be. Yet my life is also a lot less lonely, and loneliness gave me the worst writer’s block of my life.

With all my core needs met, I’m stable and I’m writing more often than I have in years. I’m actually optimistic that I am finally going to finish the 2nd novel in a series of 4 that I couldn’t bring myself to write for years.

So the paradox is interesting, and more than a little frustrating. Adventure gave me a lot of the stories, but I was too immersed in what was happening to write it down. It has been stability that gave me the breathing room to write and rewrite them down. Also, sometimes distance helps.

I wonder how many of us can write prolifically while having an adventure, or do you need stillness and steadiness to write?

The Sweetest High Ever!

“Artists are envied by millionaires.”

I don’t remember the book where I read this, but I do remember that claim and how gratifying it felt to read that. All flattery aside, this makes sense. Artists are creative and to be creative is to play God. Who wouldn’t envy that?

Personally speaking, I believe everybody is born with creativity. Yet few grow that quality or have that part of themselves nourished enough to have that creative strength throughout their lives.

Creativity is powerful. It is also overwhelming. Because I have found that a deep creative groove carves many paths, one detours to another, which then segues into another…and before one knows it, what was supposed to a straight road has become a labyrinth of various creative pursuits.

How heady is that? And how easy is it to get carried away and get lost and very possibly be left with a plethora of unfinished projects? Way too easy.  

For example, I write original fables and fairy tales. I also enjoy the art of oral storytelling, my own stuff, as well as other people’s, and of course, the myths and folk tales from all over the world. Those two pursuits are very compatible, but I still have to stop writing to practice storytelling, even with my own stuff. Storytelling is not the same thing as reading from a book. It’s a performance, and that alone takes time and energy and repetition before a piece is polished enough to present to an audience. In other words, the path of writing segued into performance art.

When I was on the road with my collection of fables, I stopped in Santa Cruz for six months and came across flamenco dance. I even lived with my flamenco teacher and her husband for most of the time I was there, and was blessed to learn from excellent Gypsy teachers who came to California from Spain. Several months later, I wrote a lyrical piece, “Snowboarding for Flamencos” when I was torn between a flamenco workshop in Santa Cruz and the best snow season in SE Alaska where I lived at the time. Winter was intoxicating, and snowboarding won over flamenco. But the conflict was such that I wrote that piece and recorded, doing flamenco dance steps in a wide variety of footwear, including my snowboarding boots. So that is writing, spoken word, dance, and even music, because I made the cadences of my dance steps into as hypnotic a rhythm that would match the lyrics of “Snowboarding for Flamencos.” This short lyrical piece that was only two minutes long was doable, and very joyful when I finished it. I also used flamenco with another piece I wrote about an ecstatic experience I had on the Oregon Coast while on magic mushrooms. Again, performance art, choreography, dance, and live spoken word. That took at least 2 weeks for me to put together and practice, and if I did it again now, the rhythms would be different because I didn’t film or record it. Again, it’s doable. But I also fantasize about doing that as a book on tape for AN ENTIRE NOVEL. That would likely take a decade. That’s not doable.

So yes, creativity is overwhelming. But what a glory it is when all those segues and paths come together and something gorgeous is created!

That is the sweetest high ever!