Daily Writing

Part of being a creative, is making sure that you give yourself the best chance for inspiration to flow in your life. To do this it is important to have a range of strategies in place. Some of the strategies can include:

• Daily Writing.
• Networking with other creatives.
• Practising a daily challenge.
• Doing things that you love.
• Playing.
• Making a mess.

I began my daily writing practise when I joined Jen Storer's Scribbles online creative writing course. I made a pledge on 27 November 2017 that I would write 3 pages every day. Jen says that it's important to write and write and write. Make a mess and just let your thoughts flow.

Another person that believes that daily writing is important is Julia Cameron, author of the book The Artist's Way. This book is a 12 week course in discovering and recovering your creative self. Julia talks about morning pages as a place where you write '...three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness...' Just write anything that comes into your head, it doesn't need to make sense, you are just clearing your mind to allow your creativity to flow. (P.S. Sometimes I only write two A4 pages a day.)

So how have I gone? 

Daily Writing Wise:

Well I try to write every day but there are some large periods of time where I have lapsed in my daily writing. My inner critic begins to talk to me more loudly and my mind is filled with self doubt. Then I suddenly realise that the creativity is not flowing so well. When I take up my daily pages again everything in my life seems clearer. My mind is open to my muse. I begin to follow a range of my creative flow strategies again. 

Scribbles Course: 

I find that I get so distracted by creating art, art challenges and art courses that I don't creatively write as much as I would like. I have watched all of the modules videos but I really want to go back to the beginning and do the creative writing activities. I know that if I want to become an instinctive writer that I need to write every day. 

The Artist's Way:

Over a year on I am up to week 11 and while I haven't been consistent with my reading and completing my weekly tasks I have learnt so much from Julia. I can more firmly hold at bay that inner critic. I understand more about being creatively blocked and needing balance in all areas of my life. Most importantly I have learnt that I need to let my creative child play. I still need to schedule more artist dates into my life but all of this works better when I write daily. 

Final Thoughts:

While I do lapse in my daily writing practise I know that it is important. I know that when I write all of my thoughts down on paper, no matter how messy and jumbled they are, that this unconscious stream of writing frees my mind. It puts the breaks on my inner critic and it stops me blocking myself from being more creative.

Daily writing helps my creativity to flow.

P.S. I just love filling up the books because I get to collage a new set of covers. here are a few of my 'old' note books.