The Magic of the Writing Process

How My Writing Life has Transformed over the Past 4 Months

Over the past four months my writing process has transformed in a large way. A series of events have colored my process and what it looks like now as we move into 2022.

Writing retreats have been an obsession for all of 2021. I blame the pandemic partly for the feeling of cabin fever and wanted to escape to immerse myself in writing. I had a few days in Ohio and had some of the most rich writing days I had experienced in a long time. This experience only fueled the desire to find a retreat with instruction and conversation with other writers. I crave immersion. 

I am not without writing community. I am part of a vibrant community through Sarah Selecky. I run my own community as well. [If you would like to join, let me know and I will send you the invitation.]

The immersion and the community also fuels another obsession: MFA programs. I am a loyal listener to the MFA Writers podcast and hang on every word. I took action on this dream last year and did apply to a fully funded program. I have no idea how that would have looked in reality of schedules and working but I had to try.

Sometime in October I started to feel an increasingly overwhelm especially digitally and the “shoulds” of what it means to be a writer. The amount of emails I was greeted by in the mornings was ridiculous. I deleted more than I read. Something had to change. I mass unsubscribed to almost everything. If I didn’t know you, or never opened the email then the subscription went away. I figured if there were things I missed, I could always bring it back.

I also decided to stop public writing of any kind. This meant I took Instagram and Twitter off my phone. I did not delete the accounts, but was more intentional about checking them on the computer when I felt like it, not Pavlov's dog when the the notifications came through. I stopped posting all together and only consumed. I also started unfollowing on both platforms. 

Instagram had become frustrating because I felt I had to post every day in order to build my audience or talk about what I was doing writing wise from a marketing perspective. But there always seemed to be a short cycle on this process, and I felt like I had to start over again every week. It had become too much of an energy drain so I stopped.

I also stopped writing on my blog. I stopped Sunday’s coffee share and Friday’s Five Minute Friday. I stopped the weekly newsletter. I made plans to take a break from my community PUSH group meetings. I stopped returning messages to people and posting anywhere. I had to stop. I felt I had nothing important to say outside of my notebooks.

Everything had become too much.  

I analyze words and myself. I have done this my whole life. You may be familiar with the Clifton Strength Finder. It is quiz that leads you to know your top strengths in order to work more effectively and to cater to your strengths. My number one is INPUT. I love to learn (another top 5) and curate information and share it. It helps me in my teaching, my coaching and my community leadership. 

For me to be overwhelmed by information seemed to go against the essence of who I am. 

Learning and growth is a constant state I am in. Over the past year my writing life has transformed in large ways. One example is I went from being a student of Sarah Selecky’s to employment as a teacher for the school. I was able to participate in bi-weekly calls with all the other teachers for a different type of community. I was also intentional about the workshops and teachers I learned from and came back to poetry in a big way. I was led to new teachers who I am learning now.

A big difference from 2020 to this year was I only had two stories published in 2021. You can read my story, Amazon Has Voodoo Dolls But not Reindeer here.

I had been frustrated with the lack of acceptances, especially coming off of my 100 submissions project in 2020 which was a success in more than one way. I wasn’t sending out pieces as often as I was before. An acceptance for my Magic Garden story came only after I made a mass retreat from the public eye. Irony anyone?

Another mindset shift came in November during NANOWRIMO. If you subscribe to my newsletter I am almost certain you are aware this acronym stands for NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH. There have been years where I felt like I had to write a massive amount of words everyday to prove I was a writer. If I didn’t mimic the success of the likes of Stephen King who writes 2000 words daily then I wasn’t a real writer. The stories we tell ourselves in the moment can seem ridiculous in reflection. 

NANOWRIMO has produced several novel length drafts for me. One of these pieces I affectionately call the “Jack Story”. I have tried to rewrite it many ways in order for it to be “marketable”. There is something special about this draft. I love the story but it is not right. The problem is that there are a massive amount of words because my goal when I wrote it was to write 2000 words a day. I followed the advice of countless writing coaches to just “get the draft down” but now I have a huge mess that is almost too overwhelming to do anything about. Over the last several days I believe I have found a solution …more on that coming soon.

I needed a new approach in my drafting and freewriting.

Drafting is my sweet spot. It is the part of writing I love the most. The magic of words flowing out, the discovery of what I think when it comes out of the pen, and the surprise is when I am the most blissful.

In the Sarah Selecky story course there is a video lesson about writing better first drafts. It was a huge lesson for me when I was a student in the fall of 2020 but somehow came back to me in a larger way this past fall as an instructor. I started rereading pieces and polishing them a little before moving onto the next thing. I started looking at first drafts as zero drafts that were reread and mined for the sparkly lines and then rewritten in a more cohesive way.

I applied new ideas to my writing from the workshops I was taking as well. 

After attending a poetry workshop with Chris LaTray through Poetry Forge there was a part that struck me like lightning. Chris has been using an almanac to inspire his writing about nature. Some days are looser than others but the idea of a daily inspiration that wasn’t a direct prompt intrigued me. It impacted my daily writing process the next day.

Chris is an amazing writer, poet, and teacher. He has a great newsletter and his One Sentence Journal is a must read. I did a month long poetry class with him in April which was magical.

Recently, I have been struggling and losing interest in things I used to love doing. I have struggled with depression in the past but this is something much bigger.

Currently, the only thing that doesn’t feel like a struggle is writing. I write every morning when I wake up but the expectations for myself have changed. I log the date and time. I record details of my dreams if I remember. These are a large inspiration for my fiction writing and poetry. I then record the Sarah Selecky daily writing prompt. I look up my Holiday Manthis horoscope. I also log the Spell of the Day from Llewellyn. This spell of the day is recorded from inspiration from Chris Latray and his almanac project. I then do a tarot card pull and record it and my reaction to it. My favorite deck right now is the Wayhome Tarot.

Then I usually use the SS daily prompt and write my fiction for at least 10 minutes. Most days it is more. Other times I use my Keep notes to write something. Other days I just stop because there is nothing else to write. This is a huge change from my previous expectations for myself. Many times all the pieces I have recorded color the writing I do that day in the notebook. 

I also have been reading at least 1 poem in the morning, usually from the Paris Review poem of the day sent to my email. I record sparkly lines and sometimes write from those lines. Sometimes I copy the whole poem.

I have more of an intention of curiosity and flow in the mornings. Showing up in the notebook is the most important part. I must have at least an hour of writing in the morning for me to feel right which has been a doable action even with the new job.

Overall, the sentences I write are better and feel more intentional. I feel like I am truly writing again and coming closer to the heart of what I am trying to say and share. 

I have big goals in 2022. The action I have control over is how I cultivate the skill and my writing practice. I am immersing myself in all the magic of it all.

What is your writing process? Has it changed recently? I would love to hear in the comments.

Thank you for reading. Happy living!