In my YouTube series, 52 Weeks of Writing – The Writing Prompts, I’m sharing the fifty-two writing prompts that are included in the first volume of my 52 Weeks of Writing Author Journal and Planner.
There are thousands of books out there on how to write your book, how to publish it, and how to market it. There are thousands of courses too, and webinars, and Facebook groups filled with writers more than willing to tell you what does and doesn’t work.
Which is great! Because none of these steps—writing your book and then finishing it, getting it published, and then figuring out how to sell it—are easy. Quite the contrary. So it’s wonderful that we have so many resources at our disposal.
There is, however, a reason we have so many resources to choose from, and that’s because there as many ways to writing, and to publishing and marketing, as there are writers. If there had been a one-size-fits-all recipe for being a writer, we wouldn’t have so many different books and courses on how to do it.
This doesn’t mean we should ignore this vast library of resources and figure out our own best practices from scratch. There’s a reason seasoned writers share their knowledge and experiences with the rest of us: their way of doing things has brought them success and it might very well inspire us when we read about them.
Some of these writers are highly aware that, just because certain things worked for them, it doesn’t mean they’ll work for others. They understand that each of us has to find our own way. Others do present whatever they’ve learned about writing as universally applicable, and that’s when we, as readers of their work, have to remind ourselves that these writers, too, are talking about their way, not everyone’s way. Because there is no ‘everyone’s way’.
That’s the main lesson I’ve learned since I started to take my writing seriously. Other writers are there to learn from but only insofar as they help us find our own way. If it resonates, we can, and should, follow their advice, we can test their habits for ourselves, we can try out new things, no matter how long we’ve been writing for. We can be entirely eclectic and pick up only those pieces of advice that make sense to us and feel right in that particular moment. Whatever else they’re saying about writing, we can leave it. It might not be for us, or it might not be for us right now.
If this is hard for you and you find yourself wanting to follow some writer’s advice merely because it sounds really good and not because it resonates with you, here are some critical questions you can ask about this resource before making any decisions:
Once you’ve answered these questions, it should be easier to step away from the advice you’ve been given and assess whether it’s the right kind of advice for you and where you are in your writing career. If no, let it go. If yes, test it, try it, and add it to your way of doing things, to your approach to writing.
In my YouTube series, 52 Weeks of Writing – The Writing Prompts, I’m sharing the fifty-two writing prompts that are included in the first volume of my 52 Weeks of Writing Author Journal and Planner.
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Writing—or being creative in general—can be highly therapeutic. There’s a reason I included the following quote by Graham Greene in the first volume of the 52 Weeks of Writing Author Journal and Planner (that is the green one):
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
Generally, I believe that committing your thoughts to paper (or to a computer screen) carries tremendous healing power. For example, it is through journaling—I write longhand in a physical journal—that I uncover what’s troubling me at any given time, which then enables me to start working through it. Writing is also about voicing your thoughts and speaking your truth, even if you’re speaking it only to yourself.
This goes for anyone, whether you consider yourself a writer or not, and whether you do something like Julia Cameron’s ‘morning pages’, have a daily gratitude journal practice, or write letters to someone who will never read them. Any writing down of whatever goes on inside of you, of whatever needs to come out, can be beneficial.
However, if you’re a writer, if writing is your calling, the act of writing itself can be therapeutic too. If I stay away from writing for too long, I become restless and moody and all round unpleasant. As if all that creative energy inside bottles up and begins to fester if I don’t channel it into something.
At least part of it has to do with escapism, which is what Graham Greene alludes to in the quote. I love getting lost in the fictional worlds I’ve created and am creating, even if only for an hour a day. It helps me deal with the ‘madness, melancholia, the panic and fear’, which we have more than enough of now.
Likewise, I love becoming lost in a project like 52 Weeks of Writing Vol. III. Collecting and picking out those writing quotes, and coming up with writing and journal prompts and exercises, that’s a form of therapy for me too. The quotes are meant to inspire those who work with the author/journal, but they obviously inspire me as well as I decide which to include. Most of the included prompts and exercises are therapeutic in nature too, which obviously affects me in very much the same way.
So yes, I absolutely believe that writing can be therapeutic, both the act of writing itself and what we end up writing down when we take the time for it.
In my YouTube series, 52 Weeks of Writing – The Writing Prompts, I’m sharing the fifty-two writing prompts that are included in the first volume of my 52 Weeks of Writing Author Journal and Planner.