I’m back to school, and so also back to finding time around the edges and in found scraps during the work week and on weekends. My pomodoro timer helps. Getting up before the sun is key. Tight boundaries around home and work are essential. I’m grateful for noise-cancelling headphones and the little coffee shop just a couple of blocks away.

Progress is slow  this season, but as the sign at a gym I used to frequent said: Slow progress is still progress. It’s easy to get all glum over the perceptions we have of our progress, as I have been lately. I picked up a copy of The 12 Week Year For Writers, which is helping me break my goals intosmaller milestones and to identify habits that get the writing done.

Still, I keep such goal-oriented work in proper regard. That sort of work is pointless to me without the more critical practice of cultivating joy through mindfulness, connection, and building habits that nurture the body and spirit.

Walks do this sort of nurturing, which is why I walk everywhere I can.  I gather images, breathe fresh air, and sometimes find unplanned side quests to complete. Like last Friday  I walked home in the rain, exhausted from a particularly challenging work week, and for the second time that week hit the closed sidewalk around the site of the new Fast Chicken Shack I am not thrilled about. Grrrr. I steamed and walked around the monstrosity everyone seems so excited about,ranting the whole time about factory farming and corporate this and that. A message came in from my sister saying she was running late. We were meeting to work on some new ideas for the editing and book design business we collaborate on. With this extra time, I decided to dip into Half Priced Books. I emerged forty minutes later with sixty-five dollars in books packed in a reusable bag with the words Fiction Addiction in bold, brassy letters. That time spent sitting on the floor so I could see all the books on the bottom shelf at HPB was just the thing I needed. It’s been the thing as long as I’ve been able to go out into the world on my own. It’s a meditation of sorts I learned early on. To sit on the carpet of libraries and bookstores reading little bits of books, sometimes falling so in love with them, I have to bring them home.

So, walking. And sleep too, though this one I have rebelled against for years. I wake early to write, but this hasn’t always meant going to bed early. Too many times, I’ve stayed up until 10 or 10:30 and still set my alarm for 4:00. The long-term effect of this is not just burnout. Sleep contributes to physical well-being and, ultimately, longevity. Twice this past week I had book group meetings that kept me up pastmy 8 o’clock bedtime. I did not get up to write those days, and whereas in a less secure time of my life I might have beaten myself up over that, now I consider it a win.

I’ve spent too long rigidly clinging to the habits of writing, focusing on word counts instead of time on task, berating myself for “failing” to show up at the scheduled time.

Why?

Because writing is vital to my being, and I didn’t yet trust myself to come back to the page. Now, I believe in myself as a writer, even when a week goes by and I haven’t written at all. So, you haven’t written. Why add more misery by making up a whole story about failure instead of just getting up to write at the next opportunity?

Mindfulness practices support the writing by making me less susceptible to the dramatic narratives that we build around our own worth (mostly our lack of worth, because of our brain’s negative bias). We read a brilliant book and think, I could never do that. We write a boring scene and think, I’m a terrible writer, wasting everyone’s time. I should hang up my hat. Many years of practice and a continued commitment to mindfulness have provided some armor against these nonsense attacks. A good starter on mindfulness is the classic Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It’s full of bite-sized mindful meditations. It’s a good one to read and re-read. Getting started is also as simple as pausing to breathe and just be in moments throughout the day and also more. It’s not something to be mastered or achieved. It’s more like an apple a day, every day, because your mind will do its human thing. It’s supposed to.

I’ve been in a writer’s group almost without pause since I was nineteen. Though there have been groups that were more hurt than help a few times, in the big picture those groups have kept curiosity and compassion at the heart of my work. Showing up for your group, even when you have no pages to show that week, is an act of devotion that pulls you through to the next time you sit to write. You go to those groups to get feedback, sure. But you also go to be in communion with other writers, to share your stories and ideas and hear theirs. You go to discuss all kinds of questions of craft in more depth and get stronger in your understanding of how your chosen form can work and not work.

As has become all too clear in the past couple of years, we are not robots whose singular aim is productivity. We are flawed and vulnerable humans producing art we hope other humans will connect to, be moved by. To do that work we must not just strive. We must stroll and sleep and surrender to needing what humans need. We must be fierce and full of grace.