My Selfish and Rewarding Writing Strategies

I’ve had writer’s block, and I always get over it. The way I do this is by acting like an extremely selfish writer. I follow the following writing strategies; all of them continually boost my writing self-esteem and fuel my passion to become the best writer than only I can be.

I Read What I Want to Write

I know, I know. You’ve heard this before, but let me explain how I read because my selfishness makes a difference.

Right now, I’m writing a novel about a young woman who has graduated from college and who decides to travel to find her life’s purpose. I want the story to move as she develops courage and clarity, so I search for stories of other young people who are on a similar quest. I also examine stories that are driven more by character than by plot to learn the techniques of character building. When I’m reading, I pause and think about the way authors incorporate the settings into their story and how the settings affect their character.

For example, in The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Santiago is a shepherd who has never traveled. His lust for seeing new places inspires him to leave his family home. He’s young and he makes mistakes, so when he’s in Tariq, a thief steals all of his money, and he has to work in order to continue on his dream.

I keep a little stack of books next to my writing desk; their paper-clipped pages have sticky notes inserted in them to mark passages that I want to emulate.

I Have Fun

The best writers obviously don’t sit at their desks all day because, if they did, they wouldn’t have enough life experience to fuel their writing. I’ve come to realize that my life is a canvas for my writing.

In my daily life, I engage in a variety of activities, including those that I’m not comfortable with at first: yoga, attending live basketball games, eating with new people at new places, taking Spanish classes, or hiking all day next to the Pacific Ocean where I can explore tidepools, meet people from all over the world, and hear sea lions bark.

Not only do my adventures keep me healthy, but they help me maintain a positive outlook, and all writer’s need that to overcome writer’s block, the struggle for clarity, and the never-ending learning curve.

I Maintain Friendships with Other Writers

To be a good dolphin, you need to swim with other dolphins. The same with writing. Being friends with writers is like taking a class in writing except it’s more fun. When I walk with my writing friends, they tell me about how they struggle with their editors. They also reveal where some of their writing ideas are generated, and they always come from the writer just living his or her life.

One of my longest writing friends is a children’s book writer, but she’s now writing a book for adults about relationships. For the last year, she’s shared how she has to collaborate with the other inexperienced writer of the book, careful not to bruise her ego but continually striving to maintain a style that will keep their readers engaged.

Some writers join groups where they take turns reading their stories. Other writer’s create roundtables through email. Others, still, have writer therapy sessions where they share and hash out their frustrations and receive advice.

I, on the other hand, just have a group of writing friends. I walk or go out to lunch with them. We have other interests besides our writing. Sometimes, I only email them once in a while, but I keep a connection. Others, I see when I pursue other interests like raising money for scholarships for college students.

I Study Writing Like I’m Hungry

I study writing like a hungry person would search for a bag of potato chips.

I stop in the middle of reading novels, newspaper articles, essays, emails, or blogs. I think about how writers say things. How they found out about World War II when they didn’t live during that time. How they researched about a character’s life when she lived a hundred years ago.

I also study the writing style of writers whose style makes me stop after particularly good phrases or sentences. I think about their use of vocabular and figures of speech, and I think about how the same techniques might improve my own writing.

Yesterday, in fact, I read a newspaper article about the Golden Stare Warrior’s basketball player Klay Thompson. The title of the article used a literary reference to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s famous poem “How Do I Love Thee.” I was struck at how effective it was to associate such a poem to a current sport’s icon.

I Keep an Idea Journal

“Jot That Down” is embossed on the front of my gold writing idea journal. I have no rules when it comes to saving ideas. I wake up at one o’clock in the middle of the night and write down an idea that just popped into my head.

My journal is messy. Words are scratched out. Ideas are saved in phrases, outlines, paragraphs, or whatever I need to keep my idea safe until I can use it.

The journal is small enough to take anywhere–doctor’s offices, trips to National Parks, and weekends away with friends–because I never know when an idea will strike me, and if I don’t write it down, I forget it.

I Only Make Promises to Myself

I said that I was a selfish writer, and I’m extremely egotistic when it comes to writing promises. I may never publish another short story or poem, essay or article. When people find out that I’m writing a novel, they want to know when it will be published. Some people want to read it.

My answer is this. My novel’s going extremely well. I don’t know when I’ll be finished. I don’t know if I’ll ever publish it, but I’m having a fabulous time writing it right now.

It took me a lifetime to find the confidence to be this selfish. Halleluiah.