It's easy to push your usual activities away and concentrate on all that comes with getting ready for and celebrating holidays. What if you didn't write anything for a full month? 31 days! Would you be quick to jump back into your writing life on January 1st? Possibly not.
Writing regularly is a habit. Once broken, habits are sometimes difficult to get re-established. But what's a busy writer to do?
Don't sweep your writing under the rug this month. Instead, cut back if you must but make a little extra time in your day to write something. It might only be a couple short paragraphs or a short poem but that's perfectly alright. You have written something! For me, it could be my daily post on the blog.
If you've started doing those Morning Pages discussed in an earlier guest post by Annette Gendler, you can still keep up with them if you get up even twenty minutes earlier. It might not be a writing project that you can end up submitting to an editor, but it's time writing, time to keep your writing habit going. Besides that, some interesting things come from writing those Morning Pages and can sometimes lead to a new story.
There are so many inspiring moments during the month of December. When they pop into your life, take a few moments to write something. Might be a cliche, but strike while the iron is hot works here.
Time is a gift that we can give ourselves. We might have to work a bit of magic now and then to do so but writers are pretty good at things like that. Don't move your writing life into a dark corner where it will gather dust. Keep it alive and well this month, even if you devote less time than usual. Less is always better than none.
Ah, yes. That time thing again. I would have more time if I stayed off Facebook. Good advice here.
ReplyDeleteYes, but if we stayed off facebook, think what we might miss!
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