Vacation time! I’ll be pausing my posts for the month of August, to take some much needed time for my own writing and my family and just lazing through the last of summer here in New England. If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll automatically get an extra month added. Posts resume the first Friday in September!

What’s new in my writing room: Honored to be included this year n the wonderful “How We Spend Our Days” series by author Cynthia Newberry Martin who has interviewed so many amazing writers (the likes of Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond and Dani Shapiro!) about a day in their writing life. It’s an inspiring look inside the process and imagination of each working writer, and I loved contributing. You can read about my (not-so-typical) writing day here.

Photo by Juan Jose on Unsplash

Summer is a great time to renew your perspective about your writing. Maybe one reason so many writers attend workshops and retreats in summer, or try challenges like ’s #1000words. We need to occasionally retreat from our usual life. We need to try something brave and new.

Creative practice works best, I’ve found, when it comes from love, not pressure. This may be a surprise to those who feel they need more discipline to get stuff done. Yes, discipline helps you get in gear, no doubt about that. But after a while, a discipline-motivated practice gets stale. At least to me. I begin to resent the pressure.

What else might work? For the past year, I’ve been trying love. Not the Hallmark variety but the type that emerges from the inside and makes the best kind of changes on the outside.

I didn’t come by this naturally. It came from freedom born out of a kind of trauma.

Unexpected freedom from trauma

In February, my spouse had a long-avoided hip surgery. I’d been the caregiver for six years, as we tried every possible option to avoid this surgery. Some surgeons said it would be incredibly difficult, given the circumstances. We found a surgeon who believed it would be simple and totally right, and the procedure was a huge success. A life-changing one.

As my spouse got mobile again, my own life became completely different too. No longer was I the only one taking care of our daily lives. (If you’ve ever been a caregiver through a major illness or disability and come out the other side, you know what I mean.)

I was astonished by the new freedom I had, freedom to pay attention to myself.

Of course, I’d taken care of my work life during those years. I’d finished and published two novels. We adopted two special-needs puppies. I grew my garden. But all of this happened along with the daily pressure of caring for someone who was becoming more and more disabled.

When the change happened, when we got our lives back (in better shape!), I realized how depleted I was. I needed rehab too! I thought a lot about what that might look like, and I saw two areas of great need: exercise and creative risk.

My 30-day creative challenge

I tackled the exercise first, even though it was still winter here in northern New England.

I set up a plan: I’d walk for 45 minutes each morning, as slow and easy as I wanted. I’d go, no matter the weather. We have a great walking route on our country road, although it’s not easy (some killer hills) and I love being alone in nature.

Killer hills don’t automatically mean slow and easy. The first day I panted up the big hill, vowing I’d never try this again. No clue how out of shape I’d become this past year as my spouse’s disability grew more severe. I staggered home, mentally quitting then and there. But a tiny voice said, Just wait til tomorrow morning, see how you feel then.

After a night’s sleep, a good one thanks to my efforts outside, I put on my walking shoes and bundled up and tackled the hills again. It was a tiny bit easier, not much. Again, I didn’t decide about tomorrow. I slept, then walked again. Days grew into weeks. Each morning I asked myself if I wanted to try a little walk, then I did it.

Without meaning to, my success came from an approach that was no pressure. Each day was a new decision to walk my country road. To date, I’ve walked every single morning, with only three missed due to pouring rain. A lot more challenge than just 30 days. My stamina and strength have increased; the hills aren’t easy but they are quite manageable now.

I began enjoying my daily practice so much, I didn’t want to stop.

And that’s exactly how any kind of successful practice is built. One small step, then another. Deciding each day to take the risk. Keeping the pressure low, building from love.

Building from love, not pressure

Pressure isn’t a friend of sustained practice, in my view. And after six years of caregiving, it certainly wasn’t a motivator for me. I’m super responsible but the thought of another “to do” deflated any enthusiasm for a new challenge like walking.

I walked each morning from love, not pressure. I built my exercise plan from my love of being outside and how my body feels with regular movement in nature. I rode on that love as momentum, rather than any external pressure or internal “have to.”

Structure helped. I learned to set out walking gear the night before. I chose a routine to follow—get out the door by 7:00 a.m., walk only 45 minutes, stretch before and after. The simplest of structures but valuable.

I also made sure I didn’t self-sabotage by scheduling competing stuff early in the morning. All too easy to do!

The litmus test was my unexpected unease when I got an invitation from dear friends to visit for the weekend. I was very amused to realize that the unease came from fear of missing my walk. Once I figured out how I’d walk around their neighborhood and get in my 45 minutes, I said yes.

A writing practice from love, not pressure

So many writers feel they need pressure, that good self-discipline, to write regularly. This may help jumpstart a writing practice, for sure. But sustain it? I haven’t ever seen pressure work long-term, unless it’s the good kind, like a signed contract with your agent or publisher. And even then, some writers fold under such pressure.

When I try love instead, I find it sustains me longer and I’m much happier with my writing practice.

If you love writing, if your writing gives something back to you, it’s going to keep you committed. I’m so convinced that this love is a true generator of enthusiastic engagement, I decided to test it out for myself as part of my “rehab” from caregiving.

My current writing project, a collection of short stories, had also been put aside when I felt so depleted from attending to my spouse’s needs. I loved the stories and I wanted to get back into them.

Just like getting my walking gear together and deciding on a route, I knew I needed a structure for support with this creative challenge. So I signed up for an online class specifically on how to curate a short-story collection. My perspective got expanded as we read different published collections, analyzing them for the order and flow and cohesion (or lack of) of topics. I learned a lot more about what was missing from my collection as I got feedback. I fell in love with the stories again, and I got excited about revising.

Each week, the instructor offered prompts and ideas, so I took them into my daily writing sessions. I began using charts and graphs, studying first lines and last lines of each story, pulling the ones that didn’t really fit and adding new ones that did. Eventually, a cohesion among the topics emerged, a way to thematically thread them as a book.

How I’ll use this in August

My collection is revised and I’m both excited and proud about it. It’s now with my three beta readers, and I’ll hear more in September. Which frees up August for another challenge.

I thought a lot about what I wanted to renew this month. Two of my biggest goals have been met this spring: regular exercise and the revision of my short-story collection. So what else waited in the wings for me, creatively?

Turns out, art. I was a painter, a visual artist, long before I became a writer. And although writing is my main squeeze in this lifetime, I love art. I have a dedicated studio as you might have read about (and seen) in this interview on “How We Spend Our Days,” with , and although my creative days often include painting, I wanted to give it more space and attention. Now I could.

August will be my art month. With love, not pressure, I’m dedicating my month to a daily dabble in art in some form.

It might be as simple as sitting on our screened porch with a journal and colored pencils for half an hour. It might be as formal as taking another painting lesson from my favorite online teacher, via Epiphany. It might be all kinds of handwork, making stuff. Or immersion in a magazine series I subscribe to, What Women Create and Where Women Create.

What will you start loving this month?

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

If you have the space and time to join me for all or part of my 30-day challenge, start with these questions:

What in your writing or creative life could use more love and less pressure?

Is there a languishing project or desire that you haven’t been able to embrace fully?

What might be one small first step to relaxing the pressure around it and loving it more?

Share your challenge with our community, if you wish. No pressure, just love!

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Shout Out!

I love to give a shout out to writing friends and former students who are publishing their books and encourage my newsletter community to pre-order or order a copy to show your support of fellow writers. Be sure to let me know if you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months! Just email me at mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! (I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

James Francisco Bonilla, An Eye for an I: Growing Up with Blindness, Bigotry, and Family Mental Illness (University of Minnesota Press), November

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 15 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published in October 2023 and also became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.