Jo Skinner's Blog
June 8, 2024
Enduring the Tough Times
This is the third of my seven pearls of writing wisdom.
These pearls grew out of a chi running programme I did in my preparation for doing a marathon a month in 2014. The advice has translated perfectly to other areas in life, including my writing.
Injury is almost inevitable for the long-term runner. This requires adjustments to be made to training and always involves a reduction if not cessation of running for a while. The injured runner may need to cycle, swim, and do some rehabilitation exercises while recovering.
Writing is no different. There may be a period where you lack inspiration, or when you receive rejection after rejection.
Life is tough. Illness, death, divorce, relationship breakdown, unexpected overtime, financial stress are just some of the ways your writing can be derailed.
The truth is that however passionate and talented you are, you will hit roadblocks and challenges. Writing is a tough gig.
Be kind to yourself.
Never be afraid to reach out for help.
Keep in touch with your tribe. If you have a writing group, keep attending even if you are unable to write or give feedback yourself. Allow yourself to feel the warm wave of comfort of being with friend(s) or family who are there without expectation and who accept you just the way you are.
Spend a little time each day just noticing. The feeling of shower water on your skin. The taste of coffee on your tongue. The warmth of sunshine on your skin. Absorb the details of the everyday, the mundane. Be present
When you feel overwhelmed by life try the following simple exercise.
It is a simple technique called rescue breathing or first aid for mental health. Sit up straight with both feet firmly on the ground, hands comfortable in your lap. Let your shoulders relax. When you are ready, take a breath and feel your diaphragm pull your lungs down. Feel the air fill your lungs. Hold the air in your lungs for the count of three, then release it while saying the word, relax, to yourself. Hold the exhalation for a count of three.
Repeat this for three breaths.
It is often enough to bring you back to the present moment, away from rumination about the past and worry about the future.
Life requires adjustments and sometimes forces you to change course.
Pull back and reduce the amount you write. If you are experiencing grief or loss, the only writing you may be capable of for a few months is to keep a journal. Use this to chronicle your emotional and or physical pain. You may only manage a word or a line to capture how you are feeling. Treat yourself to a real notebook, one with blank pages and a beautiful cover. Let it carry the burden of your pain, the weight of your feelings.
The act of emptying your head onto a page is therapeutic. Our experiences good and bad, shape who we are, who we become. When we write, we use words to make our experiences accessible to others. We share our vulnerability, our humanity and readers are relieved to learn they are not alone.
You may never share your journal words with anyone, but inevitably your tough times will spill into your writing, consciously or unconsciously. You may have signed up to write your novel when your life derailed and may instead find yourself writing about the challenges of a difficult diagnosis, the joy of an unplanned pregnancy, the grief of losing a loved one.
The words resulting from your tough times will inform others, give them hope and encouragement that they are not alone.
Writing less can sometimes be more.
It may be that your detour through the tough times takes you to exactly where you need to be.
These pearls grew out of a chi running programme I did in my preparation for doing a marathon a month in 2014. The advice has translated perfectly to other areas in life, including my writing.
Injury is almost inevitable for the long-term runner. This requires adjustments to be made to training and always involves a reduction if not cessation of running for a while. The injured runner may need to cycle, swim, and do some rehabilitation exercises while recovering.
Writing is no different. There may be a period where you lack inspiration, or when you receive rejection after rejection.
Life is tough. Illness, death, divorce, relationship breakdown, unexpected overtime, financial stress are just some of the ways your writing can be derailed.
The truth is that however passionate and talented you are, you will hit roadblocks and challenges. Writing is a tough gig.
Be kind to yourself.
Never be afraid to reach out for help.
Keep in touch with your tribe. If you have a writing group, keep attending even if you are unable to write or give feedback yourself. Allow yourself to feel the warm wave of comfort of being with friend(s) or family who are there without expectation and who accept you just the way you are.
Spend a little time each day just noticing. The feeling of shower water on your skin. The taste of coffee on your tongue. The warmth of sunshine on your skin. Absorb the details of the everyday, the mundane. Be present
When you feel overwhelmed by life try the following simple exercise.
It is a simple technique called rescue breathing or first aid for mental health. Sit up straight with both feet firmly on the ground, hands comfortable in your lap. Let your shoulders relax. When you are ready, take a breath and feel your diaphragm pull your lungs down. Feel the air fill your lungs. Hold the air in your lungs for the count of three, then release it while saying the word, relax, to yourself. Hold the exhalation for a count of three.
Repeat this for three breaths.
It is often enough to bring you back to the present moment, away from rumination about the past and worry about the future.
Life requires adjustments and sometimes forces you to change course.
Pull back and reduce the amount you write. If you are experiencing grief or loss, the only writing you may be capable of for a few months is to keep a journal. Use this to chronicle your emotional and or physical pain. You may only manage a word or a line to capture how you are feeling. Treat yourself to a real notebook, one with blank pages and a beautiful cover. Let it carry the burden of your pain, the weight of your feelings.
The act of emptying your head onto a page is therapeutic. Our experiences good and bad, shape who we are, who we become. When we write, we use words to make our experiences accessible to others. We share our vulnerability, our humanity and readers are relieved to learn they are not alone.
You may never share your journal words with anyone, but inevitably your tough times will spill into your writing, consciously or unconsciously. You may have signed up to write your novel when your life derailed and may instead find yourself writing about the challenges of a difficult diagnosis, the joy of an unplanned pregnancy, the grief of losing a loved one.
The words resulting from your tough times will inform others, give them hope and encouragement that they are not alone.
Writing less can sometimes be more.
It may be that your detour through the tough times takes you to exactly where you need to be.
May 18, 2024
Writing Wisdom - Train Your Brain
Over a series of blog posts, I will share my seven pearls of writing wisdom. This is pearl number two. They are based on a chi running programme I did years ago. I found them so helpful, I adapted them to help me build a healthy writing habit. I am a keen distance runner and found it interesting how running advice could be easily adapted to improve my writing.
Everything we learn can be reshaped, reused and recycled in a way that improves other aspects of our lives. No learning, however obscure, is a waste. Store all your experiences away where they can be retrieved and use them to pollinate other areas of your life.
Running requires us to build up slowly, to allow our muscles to make the physiological adaptations necessary for a bigger workload. When you become a writer, you need strategies to flex your motivational muscles. There will be endless diversions, time sucking activities, distractions, tasks requiring immediate attention or friends and family suddenly needing your energy. It is good to be prepared and have the scaffolding in place to resist temptation to delay getting your bum in the chair.
It can be easy to obsess about structure and planning, getting so many words down or getting published but writing is not just about rules and methodology. You need this scaffolding, the basic principles required to produce good quality work, but more than anything writing is about words. Putting one word after another.
It is necessary and important to read books about the craft, to attend workshops to hone your skills and become familiar with technique but in the end, it really is about putting your bum in that chair and getting the words down.
Begin by finding ways to write regularly. For me that is early morning. I set an alarm a few mornings a week and plug away at whatever project I am working on. A manuscript, a non-fiction essay or a piece of flash. That time is a commitment just like my hours at work. It is an appointment I make with myself.
I know writer Anne Freeman wrote her first book using her mobile phone while breastfeeding a baby. Behrouz Broochani wrote his award-winning book, ‘No Friend but The Mountains,’ while incarcerated in Manus prison. He sent thousands of text messages via WhatsApp enabling thousands of pdf files to be smuggled off the island to tell the story of his perilous journey and survival. His book went on to win the Victorian Prize for Literature and Victorian Premier’s Prize for Non-Fiction.
It does indicate that carving out a writing habit is possible, even under great duress.
Do what you need do to put aside regular time for your writing habit. It may be slipping away in the evenings after dinner or heading to a library or café a few days each week.
Create a space that inspires you to write. Ensure your computer is charged, your notebooks right there, pens at the ready for when you pull your chair in and roll your sleeves up. Pin up motivational quotes if you need to or mark a calendar with your writing days. If you are not lucky enough to have your own space, get yourself a beautiful box and place your writing things in there so that you can just pull it out, ready to start at the allotted time.
Every week has seven days with twenty-four hours in each one. No bestselling author has been gifted an extra hour or two to get their work out there.
Get a piece of grid paper and mark off 168 hours and then colour in the time you work, sleep, exercise, do chores. Are there any squares left? You might need to steal some squares back as a gift to your creative self. Be imaginative and treat those precious squares of time the way you would any other finite and valuable commodity.
It can be helpful to have a deadline for something. Find a series of writing competitions dotted throughout the year or set a challenge with your writing group to exchange a chapter or short story each month.
Do whatever works to keep your motivational muscles flexed.
Happy writing.
Everything we learn can be reshaped, reused and recycled in a way that improves other aspects of our lives. No learning, however obscure, is a waste. Store all your experiences away where they can be retrieved and use them to pollinate other areas of your life.
Running requires us to build up slowly, to allow our muscles to make the physiological adaptations necessary for a bigger workload. When you become a writer, you need strategies to flex your motivational muscles. There will be endless diversions, time sucking activities, distractions, tasks requiring immediate attention or friends and family suddenly needing your energy. It is good to be prepared and have the scaffolding in place to resist temptation to delay getting your bum in the chair.
It can be easy to obsess about structure and planning, getting so many words down or getting published but writing is not just about rules and methodology. You need this scaffolding, the basic principles required to produce good quality work, but more than anything writing is about words. Putting one word after another.
It is necessary and important to read books about the craft, to attend workshops to hone your skills and become familiar with technique but in the end, it really is about putting your bum in that chair and getting the words down.
Begin by finding ways to write regularly. For me that is early morning. I set an alarm a few mornings a week and plug away at whatever project I am working on. A manuscript, a non-fiction essay or a piece of flash. That time is a commitment just like my hours at work. It is an appointment I make with myself.
I know writer Anne Freeman wrote her first book using her mobile phone while breastfeeding a baby. Behrouz Broochani wrote his award-winning book, ‘No Friend but The Mountains,’ while incarcerated in Manus prison. He sent thousands of text messages via WhatsApp enabling thousands of pdf files to be smuggled off the island to tell the story of his perilous journey and survival. His book went on to win the Victorian Prize for Literature and Victorian Premier’s Prize for Non-Fiction.
It does indicate that carving out a writing habit is possible, even under great duress.
Do what you need do to put aside regular time for your writing habit. It may be slipping away in the evenings after dinner or heading to a library or café a few days each week.
Create a space that inspires you to write. Ensure your computer is charged, your notebooks right there, pens at the ready for when you pull your chair in and roll your sleeves up. Pin up motivational quotes if you need to or mark a calendar with your writing days. If you are not lucky enough to have your own space, get yourself a beautiful box and place your writing things in there so that you can just pull it out, ready to start at the allotted time.
Every week has seven days with twenty-four hours in each one. No bestselling author has been gifted an extra hour or two to get their work out there.
Get a piece of grid paper and mark off 168 hours and then colour in the time you work, sleep, exercise, do chores. Are there any squares left? You might need to steal some squares back as a gift to your creative self. Be imaginative and treat those precious squares of time the way you would any other finite and valuable commodity.
It can be helpful to have a deadline for something. Find a series of writing competitions dotted throughout the year or set a challenge with your writing group to exchange a chapter or short story each month.
Do whatever works to keep your motivational muscles flexed.
Happy writing.
May 11, 2024
Writing Wisdom
Start – don’t stop
You don’t have to write every single day, although many writing courses I’ve attended recommend doing this. There are times when planning a writing streak can be positive and motivating and you deliberately set your life up around the challenge for a limited time. Signing up to do NaNoRiMo (National Novel Writing Month) where you write a set number of words every day can be exhilarating. The aim here is 50K words but you can set your own goal to suit the time you have available. It may be 30K or even 20k. You don’t need to wait till November to do this, just set the challenge with your writing group or invite a writing buddy to do it with you to make you accountable. Even if you decide to write 500 words seven days a week for one month you will have 15K words at the end which is an accomplishment to be proud of.
You may prefer to try for an annual goal. Maybe aim to polish and submit three short stories to competitions in the next twelve months or to enter a competition like Furious Fiction where you write a piece of flash fiction on the first weekend of the month. Your goal could be to enter six times over the year.
Or set yourself a goal to complete the first draft of a novel in twelve months. If you aim for 70K words that comes down to 1500 per week which is achievable.
And don’t wait till January, start right now.
It is always better to set flexible goals. For example, aim to write 300 to 500 words three to five times a week. That way if life happens and one of your kids gets sick or work demands overtime, you may only meet the lower end of your goal and manage 300 words three times that week. If the stars align, you may write 500 words five days for a week.
In both instances, you have still managed to achieve your goal and can celebrate staying on track.
Make your goals SMART. Specific, Measurable, Achievable and Relevant.
Writing down, ‘I will write 500 words three to five times a week for the next three months,’ you are more likely to achieve your goal than saying, I will write my novel over the next year.
Give yourself room to breathe, set yourself up to achieve.
Just don’t stop.
You don’t have to write every single day, although many writing courses I’ve attended recommend doing this. There are times when planning a writing streak can be positive and motivating and you deliberately set your life up around the challenge for a limited time. Signing up to do NaNoRiMo (National Novel Writing Month) where you write a set number of words every day can be exhilarating. The aim here is 50K words but you can set your own goal to suit the time you have available. It may be 30K or even 20k. You don’t need to wait till November to do this, just set the challenge with your writing group or invite a writing buddy to do it with you to make you accountable. Even if you decide to write 500 words seven days a week for one month you will have 15K words at the end which is an accomplishment to be proud of.
You may prefer to try for an annual goal. Maybe aim to polish and submit three short stories to competitions in the next twelve months or to enter a competition like Furious Fiction where you write a piece of flash fiction on the first weekend of the month. Your goal could be to enter six times over the year.
Or set yourself a goal to complete the first draft of a novel in twelve months. If you aim for 70K words that comes down to 1500 per week which is achievable.
And don’t wait till January, start right now.
It is always better to set flexible goals. For example, aim to write 300 to 500 words three to five times a week. That way if life happens and one of your kids gets sick or work demands overtime, you may only meet the lower end of your goal and manage 300 words three times that week. If the stars align, you may write 500 words five days for a week.
In both instances, you have still managed to achieve your goal and can celebrate staying on track.
Make your goals SMART. Specific, Measurable, Achievable and Relevant.
Writing down, ‘I will write 500 words three to five times a week for the next three months,’ you are more likely to achieve your goal than saying, I will write my novel over the next year.
Give yourself room to breathe, set yourself up to achieve.
Just don’t stop.
