21. Take a break every 20 minutes. See the Pomodora Technique.
22. Don’t let anyone “look over your shoulder”. Put mother and editor out.
23. Be generous. Fill each page with all that you have to give.
24. Use the weather.
25. Be intentional. Just because you can publish something doesn’t mean that you should.
Love your thoughts and comments. Especially on Number 25.
Madeleine L'Engle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In prayer and in the creative process, the mind and the heart, the intellect and the intuition, the conscious and the subconscious stop fighting each other as they so often do and collaborate. As two people do who know each other, who love each other. And if the love of two people is a gift, a totally unmerited gift, so is the union of mind and heart. When we try to control our lives totally with the self we think we know, self-awareness is inhibited.
–Madeleine L’Engle, Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life
Self Portrait by Vincent Van Gogh, 1889 (Photo credit: Alaskan Dude)
In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.
Vincent Van Gogh
A few more things that we have learned through the years:
16. Detach when you edit. Hold all loosely.
17. Journal, save the scraps of your life to use in your work.
18. Chunk it. Keep your daily goals small.
19. Join a critique group – but pick carefully.
20. Be solution focused. Refuse to stay stuck in problems.
Please add to the list. We love your comments.
Oswald Chambers (1874-1917) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Patience is more than endurance. A saint’s life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, and He stretches and strains, and every now and again the saint says–’I cannot stand anymore.’ God does not heed, He goes on stretching till His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly. Trust yourself in God’s hands.
— Oswald Chambers
