creative writing on why not to be late

Essay on Being Late to School: Hurry Up with New Ideas 2024

You push the snooze button once again and finally open your eyes. It is already 8:50, and your classes start at 9. “I’m going to be late again!”— you think, already in full panic mode. In a minute, you rush out the door half-dressed, swallowing your sandwich on the go. 

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Does this happen to you every morning? Then, writing an essay on being late to class will be a beneficial task for you.

In the article, you’ll see how to approach writing a “being late” essay. Our custom-writing team has collected the most useful tips that will help you nail the task. Additionally, you will find here:

• topics to write about;
• examples of writing different types of essays on being late to class. 

☑️ How to Write Essays about Tardiness

• 📜 Essays on Being Late: Different Types
• 💡 Top Essay Ideas
• 🔎 References

In case you have to write an essay on being late in general, regardless of the situation, the following tips are for you. Learn how to compose a successful 500-words essay on the topic:   

Step #1: Start with describing a situation when being on time is extremely important.

Let the situation be a job interview, for instance. Tell about the consequences of being late in that case. Can a person who is late for a job interview actually get a job?

Step #2: Now, you can discuss reasons for tardiness.

So, why do some people tend to be late regularly? What excuses do they usually have? Are there any scientific explanations of this phenomenon? Give answers in your essay.

Step #3: Finally, you can discuss how to manage this problem.

Introduce some basic principles of time management. Don’t forget to add your recommendations. If you’ve already had a similar issue, describe how you handled it.

If you have to write an essay about your tardiness, here’s how to apologize for being late:

📜  Different Types of Essays on Being Late: How to Write

Did you know that there are several types of essays on being late? And each type requires different structure. Sounds overwhelming, right? 

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Worry not: we have an explanation for every type of essay. With our advice, you can nail your paper on coming late to school!

Apology Letter for Being Late

You write an apology letter when you need to report why you were late. It’s a short, formal essay addressed to your teacher or professor. It can seem daunting at first, but it’s relatively easy to write.

• Start with your teacher’s or principal’s name. You can add “dear” if you want. Example: Dear Mrs [your teacher’s name]
• Apologize for your lateness. Be sincere and straightforward. Example: I am very sorry I missed the first part of your class today.
• Explain why you were late. Don’t make up excuses! Describe the situation as it happened. Example: I was late because I got caught up in a traffic jam.
• Say that you understand that you were wrong. Promise that you won’t be late again. Example: I understand that I should have gotten up earlier. I’ll do my best not to let this happen again.
• Ask what you can do to catch up with the material you’ve missed. Example: I will do the classwork I’ve missed. Please allow me to write the exam I’ve missed.
• Sign the letter with your name and a complimentary close. Example: Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely, [your name]

Cause and Effect Essays for Being Late

Papers on lateness are great for exploring causes and effects. In your essay, you can focus on the reasons behind tardiness and the consequences of being late.

• Select a problem that you can work with. Example: Being late for school causes a lot of stress for a student .
• State the leading cause of the problem. Example: Lateness is often caused by a lack of sleep due to stress or too much work.
• Think about the possible effects of this problem. Example: Tardiness can lead to more stress-related problems.
• Write a conclusion. You can simply sum up what you described in the essay. Example: As you can see, being late often causes additional stress.

Narrative Essay for Being Late

Writing a narrative essay is almost like telling a story. In this case, you’ll compose a short story about your absence or tardiness. Here are some tips:

• Write a clear introduction. For example, describe the day when you were late for school. Example: One day I was late for a science lesson and missed a very exciting experiment.
• Write from the first-person perspective. This is instrumental if you’re describing something that happened to you personally. Example: I want to write about an experience that taught me a lot.
• Tell the whole story! Start by describing the reasons why you were late and finish with the outcomes and the lessons learned. Example: In the end, I understood that I should manage my time better.

Reflective Essay for Being Late

A reflective paper is a lot like a narrative essay, but it’s more formal. Here you can reflect on your understanding of punctuality and talk about what influenced it.

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• Start by formulating the main idea or a thesis. Example: Understanding how my actions affected other people helped me to become more punctual.
• Describe what you’ve learned through experience and how it influenced you. Example: This experience showed me that if you’re tardy, you can miss the most important events in your life.
• Don’t be afraid to show some creativity and use descriptive language in your reflective essay. Example: The realization hit me like lightning.

Argumentative Essay for Being Late

When writing about being late, you will need to convince the reader of your viewpoint by using arguments.

For example, you can choose to write about how lateness can affect academic performance:

• Formulate your topic as a question. The answer will become your thesis statement. Example: Topic: How can tardiness affect academic performance? Thesis: Students that come late to school disrupt the discipline and miss out on important information, leading to poor academic performance.
• Introduce two arguments—one for and one against your statement. Example: Tardiness negatively affects students’ academic performance, although some people think it’s an exaggeration.
• Present arguments that will persuade the reader that your point is correct and that the opposite is wrong. Example: Students who come to school late miss the first part of the discussion, which makes it hard for them to understand the lesson.

💡  Essays on Being Late: Top Ideas

In some cases, you’re allowed to select what to discuss in your paper. There are several angles to consider the topic from, and you may have trouble picking one.

Can’t decide what to write about in your essay on being late to class? Here are some ideas you can choose from with examples.

Reasons for Being Late to Class

You probably think that laziness and poor time management are the main reasons why students don’t arrive in time. For your essay on being late to school, you might also want to consider the following ideas:

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• Some live too far away, and it’s difficult for them to arrive on time.
• Some have illnesses or disabilities that cause them to be late.
• Sometimes students experience too much stress and have trouble sleeping.
• Learners who are bullied at school may refuse to go back there.
• Issues with public transport may result in delays.
• Some are afraid of their teachers, or they don’t want to write tests.
• Some students want to challenge authority by breaking the rules.
• Some might have problematic parents who try to keep them at home.
• Working because of the family’s tough financial situation forces students to skip classes.
• Practicing religious rites may result in lateness to school. 
• Kids can come late on purpose to show off.
• Conflicts with teachers make learners avoid attending classes.
• Caring for younger siblings may cause lateness.
• Another reason to consider for your essay is the desire to get an adrenaline rush.
• A car breaking down or a bike’s flat tire can cause learners to be unpunctual.
• Some students are not motivated to study.
• Living in a troubled neighborhood can prevent punctuality.
• Kids may fall asleep in public transport and pass their stop.
• If a child is inattentive in the morning, they may forget to get out of the house in time.
• Caring for pets before school can be a reason for students to be late.
• Some are exhausted and sleep through their alarms.
• If something around the house needs repair, students may fail to arrive at school on time.
• Going to bed late at night makes it difficult to get up in the morning. 
• Forgetting their belongings at home may cause students to go back to collect them.
• An essay on being late to school might want to look at mental health problems as a cause for lateness.
• Some might be negatively influenced by their peers.
• Many students spend too much time getting ready in the morning.
• Noisy neighbors can cause sleep problems or even make one miss one’s alarm. 
• Family problems often affect children’s capability to be organized and punctual.
• Many school kids like buying coffee before class and spend a lot of time in queues.
• Students might skip a class because they haven’t done their homework.
• For some people, it’s tough to keep track of time.
• Absence can be a result of caring for elders.
• Some may spend too much time preparing breakfast .
• Some students’ parents distract them instead of helping to get ready for school.

You can discuss one of these reasons in your essay about tardiness and propose what can be done:

Students who live too far away should inform their teachers beforehand that they can be late.

Lateness and Academic Performance

Alternatively, you can focus on the impacts of tardiness on studying. Explain the effects of poor attendance in an essay: write about one of the following points.

• During the first hours in the morning, students are the most attentive.
• The first few minutes of class often cover essential information.
• If you are often late, your tardiness can become chronic, which can affect your academic performance .
• Tardiness causes behavioral problems and can lead to suspension.
• Lateness makes you distracted and less attentive.
• A significant disadvantage of being late is possible conflicts with teachers .
• Students who are late have problems with keeping accurate records.
• The ability to follow the instructions is reduced in tardy learners.
• Students that often arrive late can miss out on important tests or exams.
• Lateness increases academic stress .
• Being tardy increases the school workload at home.
• One pupil’s lateness can disrupt the whole class.
• Tardiness negatively affects one’s reputation.  
• Lateness usually makes learners feel disconnected from school.
• Tardiness can result in dropouts. 
• Teachers often decide to keep late students out of class.

• Learners who are always late might have a harder time getting teachers’ help and support.
• At worst, chronic tardiness can delay the graduation of affected students.
• The stress that comes with being late to class can impact learners’ concentration. 
• Teachers may want to check late students’ homework more thoroughly.
• Tardy pupils may be assigned extra tasks or tests.
• Tardy students may have to report to the principal .
• An instructor is less likely to grant you automatic A or other favors if you’re chronically late.
• Tardiness can start a snowball effect with many unintended adverse consequences.
• In a lesson with group projects , late teenagers disappoint their classmates.
• Chronic lateness in middle school may lead to problems in high school.
• Late students may not be admitted to exams .
• Tardy students might find it challenging to keep up with the education process.
• Tardiness decreases motivation to study .
• Some teachers punish late students by deliberately lowering their grades.
• Pupils who are not punctual are unlikely to get school awards and prizes.
• Continually tardy learners are likely to be detained after school.
• Parents might want to punish their chronically late children by making them to do additional work.
• Classmates will consider their tardy peers last when they need to select partners for group projects.

You can also discuss how tardy students affect the activity of the whole class:

Students who are late for school cause teachers to interrupt their lessons. They take other students’ attention away from the teacher and can sometimes disrupt discipline in class.

Reasons for Being Punctual

Naturally, every student needs to learn how to manage time properly . So, why not write an essay about the importance of being punctual? Here are some topic examples:

• Punctuality makes you more disciplined. 
• Punctuality means not only getting to school on time but also never missing your deadlines.
• Punctual students perform better in academics. 
• Punctuality makes your thoughts more precise and your mind more stable.
• Punctual students won’t get in trouble or detention due to lateness.
• Punctuality characterizes a confident person who is realistic about how long their actions take.
• If you’re always on time, you rarely miss crucial information and can learn more skills.
• Another reason why not being late is beneficial is that you can perform more tasks during the day.
• By being punctual, one shows respect for other people and oneself.
• People have more confidence in those who are always on time.
• It isn’t easy to follow one’s schedule without being punctual.
• You don’t need to apologize if you’re not late.
• Punctuality saves time and reduces stress. 
• A punctual person does not have to cancel plans because of their lateness.
• For a punctual person, it’s easier to multitask. 
• You are less likely to have problems with teachers or classmates.
• Punctuality is a valuable skill in all spheres of life.
• Punctuality leaves you more time to enjoy your hobbies and relax.
• Punctual students are considered reliable.
• An argumentative paper could demonstrate that there are simply no disadvantages to always being on time.
• Punctual kids don’t force teachers to interrupt lessons and have fewer conflicts with them. 
• Punctual students are more organized.
• Timeliness helps students to build confidence .
• Punctuality goes hand in hand with professionalism and attention to detail.
• It’s less awkward to wait for someone than have someone else wait for you.
• Precise scheduling teaches learners how to manage time and prioritize things .
• You don’t come off as disrespectful or arrogant.
• A punctual person has their life under control.
• Punctual students worry less about making mistakes .
• Others don’t make fun of people who avoid being late.
• Punctual people are usually treated with respect.
• Punctuality helps learners build their integrity .
• Always being on time makes you more likable.
• You’re comfortable with having some downtime if you’re punctual.
• Students’ punctuality increases their self-control .

You can also try and find other reasons why being punctual is better than being tardy.

If you’re punctual, you have better relations with teachers, and you’re considered reliable.

How to Stop Being Late to School

Still haven’t found a good topic for your essay on being late to class? Try writing about how to avoid lateness!

• Calculate the best time for you to wake up, get ready, and leave the house.
• Keep track of how much time you spend on your morning routine.
• Learn to respect your teachers and fellow students.
• Think of how to reduce stress.
• Try going to bed and waking up earlier.
• Don’t be afraid to discuss your tardiness problem with teachers.
• Leave the house as early as possible.
• Set several alarms without a snooze option.
• Think of the best way to get to school beforehand.
• Invite your friends to meet somewhere and go to school together.
• Make your alarm melody louder and more energetic.
• Start to follow the same sleep schedule every day.
• Prepare everything in the evening so that you don’t have to do it before school.
• Set alarms to know when it is time to go out, eat, or do homework .
• Spend more time outside to reduce stress.
• Set your watch and clocks five or ten minutes ahead.
• Exercise more . Morning jogging is especially helpful for developing punctuality.
• Do your homework as early as possible.
• Organize your working space and make it comfortable.
• Plan your activities so that you can go to bed earlier.
• Spend less time on social networks or playing computer games .
• Remember that being late is disrespectful.
• Ask your parents to help you prepare for school quicker.
• Learn the schedule of the public transport you use.
• Avoid getting distracted on your way to school.
• Respect your own time and find ways to stay motivated.
• Remember that arriving too late often means missing out on important information.
• Don’t fall asleep on public transport on your way to school.
• Reward yourself when you arrive on time.
• If you live far from your school, find a friend who has a car and could drive you.
• Have a nutritious breakfast that can be quickly prepared. 
• Check your backpack before going out to make sure you didn’t forget anything.
• Ask your parents or siblings to wake you up if you sleep through the alarm.
• Try being punctual without rushing.
• Ask your parents to avoid distracting you in the morning.
• Don’t use your smartphone while having breakfast or getting ready to leave.

You can come up with your own tips as well!

Try to keep your things organized so that you can get ready more quickly.

Excuses for Being Late

You know how excuses for being late to school can sometimes be funny and make teachers question if you’re telling the truth. Yet, there are many valid reasons for a delay, which are helpful to know. Discussing why students failed to come on time may be interesting for an essay on being late to school. For example:

• Illness verified by a parent.
• Medical appointments.
• Problems in the family. 
• Extreme weather conditions.
• Participation in community events.

There are many legitimate reasons for a student’s absence. Here’s how you can write about them in your essay:

Example: Students with ADHD are usually not punished when they’re late, but they’re encouraged to be more punctual next time.

Now you know everything you need to write a perfect paper! There is one more piece of advice we want to give you. Don’t forget about the deadline for submitting your essay on being late.

And thanks for reading the article! Send it to your peers who might find it useful.

🤔  Essays on Being Late FAQ

Students are often latecomers. Coming to class on time may seem unimportant. There is usually no serious punishment, which is one of the reasons why some students are always late.

The disadvantages are numerous. A latecomer attracts the unwanted attention of the audience and provokes negative reactions. Those who are late do not make a good impression. Coming late is bad in most aspects except for a few advantages like sleeping more.

An occasional late arrival doesn’t necessarily say anything about your personality. Everyone might have some bad days when things just don’t work out well. But always coming late (or often enough) says that you are irresponsible and have poor time-management skills.

Sometimes, students are asked to write an essay after they are late to class. The topic of that essay is simple: being late. It is a means of discipline to help students understand how bad it is to arrive late.

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🔎  References

• Solve a Teaching Problem: Students Come to Class Late: Carnegie Mellon University
• 5 Ways to Stop Being Late to All of Your Classes: Study.com
• The Impact of Tardiness on School Success: Hailey Elementary
• The Role of Personality and Agencies of Socialization in Tardiness, Absenteeism and Academic Performance: Researchgate
• Cause and Effect Essays: EAP Foundation
• Narrative Essays: Purdue University
• Reflective Writing: Plymouth University
• 4 Habits of Punctual People: Fast Company
• This Is Why You’re Always on Time: Huffpost
• Student Truancy and Lateness: OECD iLibrary
• 9 Extremely Good Reasons You Should Never Be Late Again: Inc.com
• Best and Worst Excuses for Being Late to Work: The Balance Careers
• The Advantages of Being on Time vs. Being Late to School: Seattle PI
• Never Be Late Again: 15 Tips to Guarantee You’ll Always Be on Time: Entrepreneur
• How to Deal with a Teen Who Is Late for School Every Morning: Very Well Family
• Reducing Late Arrivals: Duquesne University
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How to Avoid Being Late

Last Updated: November 30, 2022 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Zach Pontrello . Zach Pontrello is an Embodied Leadership & Relationship Coach and the Founder of One Thought Growth & Sovereign Man Academy. His expertise lies in helping people build better relationships with themselves and with their partners, focusing on communication and honesty. Zach received his degree from John Carroll University. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 127,851 times.

Tired of showing up late to different places and events? It's never fun being tardy—but luckily, there's a lot that you can do to improve your timeliness. We've put together plenty of tips and tricks to help you get started. With enough focus and dedication, your days of being late will be a thing of the past.

Give yourself enough time to get ready.

Don't give yourself permission to be late.

Allow ample time for your journey.

Avoid overextending yourself.

Refrain from accepting invites to events you can't make.

Always give yourself more time than you need to get there.

Expert Q&A

• Set your clock forward by an odd number of minutes. (Setting back by 10 or 15 minutes is too easy to calculate instantly). For example, if the real time is 10.10, change yours to 10.17. This way, you think you have less time than you do. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 1
• Empathize with the person who is waiting for you. Even if it is not intentional, it is not fun to be kept waiting. If you put yourself in the position of the person waiting for you, you will better gain a sense of urgency and try harder to avoid being tardy. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 1

• Recognize that tardiness, especially consistent tardiness, is a trait that illustrates your lack of respect for others. It also suggests that you think that you are more important than those who are waiting for you. Ultimately this arrogant nature will eventually create feelings of animosity from the people who you consistently keep waiting. Thanks Helpful 49 Not Helpful 13
• On the flip side, your tardiness may be illustrating lack of self-esteem. Perhaps you think that your presence doesn't really matter. If that were true, why were you included in the planning/invitations? They want you there, so don't disappoint them. Thanks Helpful 46 Not Helpful 12

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.npr.org/2021/12/06/1061811764/how-to-be-on-time
• ↑ https://www.rit.edu/behindthebricks/content/travel-tips-top-10-modes-transportation
• ↑ https://downloads.lww.com/wolterskluwer_vitalstream_com/sample-content/9780781770040_Kronenberger/samples/97190.Ch6.pdf
• ↑ https://shakerroadschool.org/2018/10/teaching-timelinessand-benefits-arriving-school-early/

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Late for everything? Here are 7 tips to help you break the habit.

Elise Volkmann spent years operating on EST: Elise Standard Time. Her close friends and family knew that meant she would always be 15 minutes late.

“I didn’t like it, but I didn’t know how to fix it,” says Volkmann, 30, a massage therapist in Seattle. Until one day she did: She started leaving home at least 30 minutes before she needed to and realized that not being in a hurry was “awesome.”

Christina Garrett, 36, a mom of five in Montgomery, Ala., describes herself as a recovering chronically late person. Being on time felt like “climbing Mount Everest,” she says. Something would inevitably pop up as she was on her way out the door, and eventually “it was expected of our family that we would arrive after the start time of any designated activity.”

Garrett reached a turning point when she was pulled over by the police three times in one week because she was rushing. One of the officers pointed out that lots of people get into accidents because they’re running late and driving too fast — and reminded her that she had “precious cargo” in her minivan.

Like Volkmann and Garrett, many of us are chronically late — to work, to dentist and hair appointments, to birthday parties and to anything else with a start time.

Ask Amy: Readers respond on how to handle chronic lateness

This tardiness can be explained by a number of factors, including specific personality traits and a lack of time management skills, experts say. Often, it’s caused by attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, which is characterized by traits such as inattention and impulsivity.

Chronic lateness is “extremely common among people with ADHD — more of them have it than not,” says Mary Solanto , a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine in Long Island. Those with ADHD who don’t struggle with chronic lateness typically did in the past but “were able to come up with ways to overcome it,” she says. “It’s a very big problem: People have been fired because they’re chronically late. It has significant consequences.”

In general, people with ADHD don’t have a good sense of time, says Solanto, who developed a popular cognitive-behavioral intervention program for adults with ADHD. “They tend to fly by the seat of their pants and do things spontaneously, and they don’t plan for many things.”

Beyond people with ADHD, there are a handful of personality types more likely than others to be late, theorizes Linda Sapadin , a clinical psychologist in New York:

● The perfectionist, who might fuss over her hair or the font size on her work presentation, determined to get it right even at the cost of being late.

● The crisis-maker, who “needs an adrenaline rush to get going.”

● The dreamer, who “doesn’t pay enough attention to detail.”

● The pleaser, who says yes to everyone.

● The defier, who rebels against expectations.

Fortunately, there are ways to overcome chronic lateness, whether you have ADHD or simply struggle to prioritize punctuality. Here are experts’ favorite strategies:

Figure out exactly how long it will take to get somewhere, then build in extra time. People often underestimate the amount of time it will take to reach their destination, says Ellen Hendriksen , a clinical psychologist based in Massachusetts. You might assume it will take 20 minutes to drive to the movie theater — but that’s not accounting for traffic, finding a parking spot, walking to the entrance, standing in line to buy a ticket (or snacks), finding the right theater and then settling into your seat. Go ahead and check Google Maps for an estimate on travel time, but don’t overlook all those transition activities.

And don’t plan to arrive right on time — say, 7 p.m. if that’s when the dance recital starts. “That literally gives you a one-minute window in which to be on time,” Hendriksen says. “And then anything after that, you’re late. If you aim to be 10 minutes early, now you have a 10-minute window in which you can be on time.”

Surround yourself with clocks. “We’re all familiar with digital clocks, but analog clocks — the ones with faces — give you a different visual cue, and you can actually see the passing of time,” says Rashelle Isip , a New York-based time management coach. Prominently display clocks everywhere you spend time, she suggests, including your living room and office. And even if you always have the time in your pocket — on your phone, that is — don’t discount a “good old-fashioned wristwatch.” Wearing one can help you get in the habit of checking the time and ensuring your day is proceeding according to schedule, Isip says.

Set lots of alarms. This is one of Solanto’s favorite tips for people with ADHD, but she notes that it can be useful for anyone who struggles with punctuality. “Set one for the time you have to start getting ready to leave and one for when you actually have to leave the house,” she says. Set another alarm for whatever time your appointment starts. These frequent audible reminders can help get your attention if you’ve lost track of time.

Create artificial deadlines. If you’re what Sapadin describes as a “crisis-maker,” you crave the thrill of a tight deadline. So set an extra early deadline for yourself: If you absolutely have to be out of the house at 7 p.m., tell yourself you’ll leave by 6:30, or else. “You’re fooling yourself, but we do lots of things to fool ourselves, and it works,” she says.

They’re late. They’re great. Hurry up and read these stories of the non-punctual.

Don’t start an enjoyable — or important — activity before a pressing event. Solanto advises not diving into your favorite video game, or even beginning to tackle a work task, in the hour or so leading up to your intended departure time. “Putting the brakes on” is challenging, especially for people with ADHD, she says. It wouldn’t be surprising if you were still engrossed in the activity hours past the time you were supposed to leave.

Plan what you’ll do if you’re early. “Waiting is really anathema for people with ADHD,” Solanto says, and many prefer to be late than to wind up with time to kill. The solution? Bring something you’ll enjoy, like a magazine you don’t get to read often or a special game you downloaded on your smartphone. That can make the waiting time more palatable, she says. (This can also serve Sapadin’s perfectionist well — having something to look forward to can be reason enough to, for example, head out rather than finishing up “one more thing” at home.)

Envision how you’ll feel if you’re late. When an alarm goes off, signaling that it’s time to start getting ready, imagine what it will be like if you’re late to your appointment. As Solanto puts it: “How is the other person going to feel? How is the employer going to feel, or the teacher? How are you going to feel walking in late, especially when there’s a group involved?” Transporting yourself to that moment, and imagining the consequences of being late in visceral detail, can be very motivating.

Bonus tip: If you’re punctual but dealing with a person who’s chronically late, address the tardiness in a one-on-one conversation. “Try to understand where they’re coming from and what challenges they might be facing,” Isip says, and talk about how you can best provide support. For example, if you’re about to go on a road trip together and need to leave at 10:30 a.m., plan to check in with each other around 10. “You can see how things are going,” Isip says, and ensure that preparations are proceeding on time. And be patient: “Like anything, we can’t expect people to change right away or on a dime.”

Angela Haupt is a freelance writer and editor. Follow her on Twitter @angelahaupt .

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How to Stop Being Late

Try these ten tips to build sustainable habits to be on time..

Posted September 20, 2021 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

• Condition yourself for punctuality by planning ahead and expecting the unexpected.
• Rethink and embrace being early, particularly in the context of respect for others' time.
• Experiments with different techniques to see what works for you and your busy life.

We all have a horror story about being late, from arriving at a wedding just as the bride and groom are running off in a shower of birdseed to spilling popcorn kernels in front of miffed movie-goers when we’ve arrived mid-film. Being late even shows up in our nightmares—who hasn’t woken up in a sweat from a late-for-a-final-exam dream? Before you’re late for your next important date, consider these 10 tips for being right on time:

Tip #1: Re-estimate how much time you think things will take.

Optimism (or, ahem, delusion) is the biggest driver behind our underestimation of how long tasks will take. Try adding a buffer of at least 25 to 50 percent more time than you’ve estimated. The bigger the task or the longer the travel time, the more wiggle room you have to build in. Especially if it’s a task you’ve not yet encountered before, err on the side of caution even if it sounds like a breeze.

Tip #2: Account for transition activities.

These include traffic, getting kids out of the house (“You have to poop now ?”), and the big one-two punch, parking and walking. These are the mundane tasks that stealthily (yet all too consistently) throw off our estimates. Too often we look up the drive time on Google Maps and take the estimate as gold. Instead, consider bookending that estimate with extra time to find your kid’s other shoe and feed the parking meter. It seems obvious, but it’s not. Try it and watch your life change.

Tip #3: Beware “one more thing.”

This also falls under the optimism umbrella, but deserves its own tip. Oftentimes we’ll try to squeeze in one more thing—get gas, check email—which inevitably makes us late. A college friend once said he had to do “just one thing” before a road trip. I envisioned a trip to the ATM or mailbox, but he then proceeded to replace his transmission. By himself. With an acetylene torch from the art department.

Even though we know better, we think that the last errand will magically take no time at all. So, make like Jacques the shrimp in "Finding Nemo" and tell yourself, “I shall resist.”

Tip #4: Beware “I’ll just do everything else faster.”

We might be tempted to press the snooze alarm or squeeze in one last task, agreeing with the devil on our shoulder that all we need to do is hit fast forward for the rest of our morning. But trying to hurry just makes us stressed (and, of course, late). It’s worth it to get up on time—you can even place your phone or alarm clock on the other side of the room. This might require a shift of evening habits to allow you to go to bed earlier (but that’s a whooooole 'nother article).

Tip #5: Rethink your semantics.

Instead of thinking, “We have to be at the recital at 5:00,” think “The curtain goes up at 5:00.” There’s a big difference between being in your seat, program in hand, versus having technically arrived, but still cruising around looking for parking at the appointed hour.

Therefore, change your wording: “I need to be in the restaurant at 7:30,” “The meeting begins at 2:00,” or “I have an hour to finish this, and drive there, and park.” Spelling it out gives us a sense of the magnitude of the steps involved.

Tip #6: Being early isn’t a waste of time.

Most of us hate wasting time. When we’re kept waiting, like in a doctor’s waiting room or a restaurant where we have a reservation, we get annoyed and agitated. Therefore, we assume that deliberately getting somewhere early will feel the same way. Not necessarily! When you’re deliberately early, you’re in charge, so you get to fill the time however you want, knowing that it doesn’t come at the expense of someone else’s convenience. Indeed, that last email, crammed in before leaving the house, could actually be written leisurely once you’ve actually arrived and are in the waiting area.

To this point, though, a tip I often hear is to keep something productive on hand to fill in those empty few minutes: write a thank you note, catch up on email. If it works for you, great. But also consider using the time for something pleasant, not just productive: look through photos on your phone, read a real book (how quaint!), or strike up a conversation with other early birds (bonus: at a business event, casual conversation beforehand builds relationships, which qualifies as super productive).

Tip #7: Aim for 10 minutes early, if only to increase your margin of error.

Here, punctuality is boiled down to a math problem. Think of it this way: aiming to arrive precisely on time gives you basically a one-minute window of arrival. If your event starts at noon, you aim to arrive at noon, and you arrive even at 12:01, you’re late. The margin of error is too small. Stress is guaranteed.

Instead, if your event starts at noon and you aim to get there at 11:50, you have a 10-minute window of arrival. Much more realistic and much less likely to make you drive like a stunt double.

Tip #8: Transfer your biggest morning headache to the night before.

You don’t have to be extreme—please don’t sleep in tomorrow’s clothes—but consider taking the biggest time drains from your morning and doing them the night before. Packing kids’ school lunches, putting your keys, phone, and wallet in one place, even showering and laying your clothes out for the morning can all be done before you hit the sack.

Tip #9: Get into the habit of thinking ahead.

Most tips you’ll find here (or elsewhere online) are based on the assumption that we think ahead about our tasks. For example, do X early, estimate Y more accurately. But most of us are late precisely because we forget to think ahead. We look up the appointment’s address at the last minute and realize it’s farther away than we thought. Or we forget that our reservations are at the height of rush hour.

Thinking ahead is a part of organization and time- management skills, something that takes time to develop. But the greatest added value can come from this: In addition to packing those kid lunches, consider visualizing the next day the night before. If you break it down by chunk or by scheduled meetings and events, it’s easier to picture what preparation may go into each, and to plan accordingly. (Or for true punctuality ninjas, look at the upcoming week on Sunday night.)

Where do you have to be and when? Are there new addresses to map out online? Are there any really important events, like an interview, a funeral, or a kid's recital you can’t be late for? Anything scheduled back-to-back-to-back? An always-punctual colleague blocks 45 minutes for 30-minute meetings to allow a buffer for surprises (like the inevitable "that guy" who makes the meeting run over with questions specific only to him). Pinpoint the weak spots and plan (or reschedule) accordingly.

Tip #10: Try it once and see.

If you’re chronically late, pick one upcoming event for which you’ll be on time. Then do it up right: Plan ahead, account for all transitions, leave early, and aim to be the first one there.

Then, observe the process of everyone else’s arrival. Notice how you feel calm instead of frantic, that you don’t have to feel guilty, and most importantly, notice how you feel when others arrive late.

There’s a French saying, which translates loosely to, “While you keep a man waiting, he reflects on your shortcomings.” I might add, “...even if you’ve texted that you’re running late.” Putting yourself in the shoes of those you’ve kept waiting is a powerful motivator to change for the better. You’ll come off as more professional, more respectful, and more competent. Not to mention more relaxed.

Call it prompt, punctilious, or just plain old on time. There’s no zealot like the newly converted; try it out a few times. You’ll love moving from being put on the spot to getting there on the dot.

Ellen Hendriksen, Ph.D. , is a psychologist at Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders.

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Creative Nonfiction: A Movement, Not a Moment

This may come as a surprise, but I don’t know who actually coined the term creative nonfiction. As far as I know, nobody knows. I have been using it for a long time, though, as have others, and although the term came into vogue relatively recently (about the time I started this journal, 13 years ago), the kind of writing it describes has a long history. George Orwell’s famous essay, “Shooting an Elephant,” is textbook creative nonfiction, combining personal experience with high-quality literary-writing techniques. Ernest Hemingway’s paean to bullfighting, “Death in the Afternoon,” falls under the creative nonfiction umbrella as does Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff” and Frank McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes.”

For a time, this kind of writing gained popularity as “New Journalism” due in large part to Wolfe, who published a book of that title in 1973 which declared that this style of writing “would wipe out the novel as literature’s main event.” Gay Talese described New Journalism in the introduction to his landmark collection, “Fame and Obscurity”: “Though often reading like fiction, it is not fiction. It is, or should be, as reliable as the most reliable reportage, although it seeks a larger truth [my italics] than is possible through a mere compilation of verifiable facts, the use of direct quotation and the adherence to the rigid organizational style of the older form.”

This is perhaps creative nonfiction’s greatest asset: It offers flexibility and freedom while adhering to the basic tenets of nonfiction writing and/or reporting. In creative nonfiction, writers can be poetic and journalistic simultaneously. Creative nonfiction writers are encouraged to utilize literary techniques in their prose—from scene to dialogue to description to point of view—and be cinematic at the same time. Creative nonfiction writers write about themselves and others, capturing real people and real life in ways that can and have changed the world. What is most important and enjoyable about creative nonfiction is that it not only allows but also encourages the writer to become a part of the story or essay being written. The personal involvement creates a special magic that alleviates the suffering and anxiety of the writing experience; it provides many outlets for satisfaction and self discovery, flexibility and freedom.

Since the early 1990s, there has been an explosion of creative nonfiction in the publishing and academic worlds. Many of our best magazines—The New Yorker, Harper’s, Vanity Fair, Esquire—publish more creative nonfiction than fiction and poetry combined. Every year, more universities offer Master of Fine Arts degrees in creative nonfiction. Newspapers are publishing an increasing amount of creative nonfiction, not only as features but in the news and Op-Ed pages, as well.

This wasn’t always the case. When I started teaching in the English department at the University of Pittsburgh in the 1970s, the concept of an “artful” or “new” nonfiction was considered, to say the least, unlikely. My colleagues snickered when I proposed teaching a “creative” nonfiction course, while the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences proclaimed that nonfiction writing in general—forget the use of the word creative—was, at best, a craft, not too different from plumbing. As the chairman of our department put it one day in a faculty meeting while we were debating the legitimacy of the course: “After all, gentlemen”—the fact that many of his colleagues were women often slipped his mind—“we’re interested in literature here, not writing.” That remark and the subsequent debate had been precipitated by a contingent of students from the school newspaper who marched on the chairman’s office and politely requested more nonfiction writing courses “of the creative kind.”

One colleague, aghast at the prospect of this “new thing” (creative nonfiction), carried a dozen of his favorite books to the meeting— poetry, fiction and nonfiction—gave a belabored mini-review of each and then, pointing a finger at the editor of the paper and pounding a fist, stated: “After you read all these books and understand what they mean, I will consider voting for a course called creative nonfiction. Otherwise, I don’t want to be bothered.” Luckily, most of my colleagues didn’t want to be bothered fighting the school newspaper, so the course was approved—and I became one of the first people, if not the first, to teach creative nonfiction at the university level, anywhere. That was in 1973.

Twenty years later, I started the journal Creative Nonfiction to provide a literary outlet for those journalists who aspired to experiment with combining fact and narrative. I wrote an editorial statement, put out a call for manuscripts and waited for the essays to pour in. Which they did: Many dozens of nonfiction pieces arrived at our mailbox over the first few weeks, more and more as the word spread, and we filled our first few issues.

And this was as I had expected. I had been confident that there were great creative nonfiction writers everywhere waiting for the opportunity to liberate themselves—all they needed was a venue. But I soon began to realize, as I spread the essays out on the floor in my office, as I tended to do when selecting and choreographing an issue, that most of the best essays were written not by journalists but by poets and novelists.

In fact, writers crossing genres seems to be another significant hallmark of the creative nonfiction genre and a reason for its popularity. Many of the writers whose works have appeared in the pages of Creative Nonfiction over the years first made their marks in other genres.

All this flexibility—writers crossing genres, applying tools from poetry and fiction to true stories—has made some people, writers of creative nonfiction included, uncomfortable. I travel often and give talks to groups of students and other aspiring writers. Invariably, people in the audience ask questions about what writers can or can’t do, stylistically and in content, while writing creative nonfiction. The questioners are unrelenting: “How can you be certain that the dialogue you are remembering and recreating from an incident that occurred months ago is accurate?” “How can you look through the eyes of your characters if you are not inside their heads?”

I always answer as best I can. I try to explain that such questions have a lot to do with a writer’s ethical and moral boundaries and, most important, how hard writers are willing to work to achieve accuracy and credibility in their narratives. Making up a story or elaborating extemporaneously on a situation that did, in fact, occur can be interesting but unnecessary. Truth is often more compelling to contemplate than fiction. But the questions and the confusion about what a writer can or cannot do often persist—for too long.

The Creative Nonfiction Police

Once, at a college in Texas, I finally threw up my hands in frustration and said, “Listen, I can’t answer all of these questions with rules and regulations. I am not,” I announced, pausing rather theatrically, “the creative nonfiction police!”

There was a woman in the audience—someone I had noticed earlier during my reading. She was in the front row: hard to miss— older than most of the undergraduates, blond, attractive, in her late 30s maybe. She had the alert yet composed look of a nurse, a person only semi-relaxed, always ready to act or react. She had taken her shoes off and propped her feet on the stage; I remember how her toes wiggled as she laughed at the essay I had been reading.

But when I announced, dramatically, “I am not the creative nonfiction police,” although many people chuckled, this woman suddenly jumped to her feet, whipped out a badge and pointed in my direction. “Well I am,” she announced. “Someone has to be. And you are under arrest.”

Then she scooped up her shoes and stormed barefooted from the room. The Q-and-A ended soon after, and I rushed into the hallway to find the woman with the badge. I had many questions, beginning with “Who the hell are you? Why do you have a badge? And how did you know what I was going to say when I didn’t have any idea?” I had never used the term creative nonfiction police before that moment. But she was gone. My host said the woman was a stranger. We asked around, students and colleagues. No one knew her. She was a mystery to everyone, especially me.

The bigger mystery, however, then and now, is the debate that triggered my symbolic arrest: the set of parameters that govern or define creative nonfiction and the questions writers must consider while laboring in or struggling with what we call the literature of reality.

I meant what I said to that audience: I am not the creative nonfiction police. But I have been called “the Godfather behind creative nonfiction,” and I have been doing this for a long time—more than a dozen published books, 30 years of teaching and then editing this groundbreaking journal. And so, while I won’t lay down the law, I will define some of the essential elements of creative nonfiction. The

Basic public education once covered the three R’s: Reading, ’Riting and ’Rithmatic. I find it’s helpful to think of the basic tenets of creative nonfiction (especially immersion journalism) in terms of the five R’s.

The first R is the “real life” aspect of the writing experience. As a writing teacher, I design assignments that have a real life, or immersion, aspect: I force my students out into their communities for an hour, a day or even a week so that they see and understand that the foundation of good writing is personal experience. I’ve sent my students to police stations, bagel shops, golf courses; together, my classes have gone on excursions and participated in public-service projects—all in an attempt to experience or to recreate from experience real life.

Which is not to say that all creative nonfiction has to involve the writer’s immersion into the experiences of others; some writers (and students) may utilize their own personal experience. In one introductory course I taught, a young man working his way through school as a salesperson wrote about selling shoes, while another student who served as a volunteer in a hospice captured a dramatic moment of death, grief and family relief.

Not only were these essays—and many others my students have written over the years—based on real life, but they also contained personal messages from writer to reader, which gave them extra meaning. “An essay is when I write what I think about something,” students will often say to me. Which is true, to a certain extent—and also the source of the meaning of the second R: “reflection.” In creative nonfiction, unlike in traditional journalism, a writer’s feelings and responses about a subject are permitted and encouraged. But essays can’t just be personal opinion; writers have to reach out to readers in a number of different and compelling ways.

This reaching out is essential if a writer hopes to find an audience. Creative Nonfiction receives approximately 200 unsolicited essays a month, sent in by writers seeking publication. The vast majority of these submissions are rejected, and one common reason is an overwhelming egocentrism: In other words, writers write too much about themselves and what they think without seeking a universal focus so that readers are properly and firmly engaged. Essays that are so personal that they omit the reader are essays that will never see the light of print. The overall objective of a writer should be to make the reader tune in— not out.

Another main reason Creative Nonfiction and many other journals and magazines reject essays is a lack of attention to another essential element of the creative nonfiction genre, which is to gather and present information, to teach readers about a person, place, idea or situation, combining the creativity of the artistic experience with the essential third R in the formula: “research.”

Even the most personal essay is usually full of substantive detail about a subject that affects or concerns a writer. Read the books and essays of the most renowned nonfiction writers in this century, and you will find writers engaged in a quest for information and discovery. From Orwell to Hemingway to John McPhee and Joan Didion, books and essays written by these writers are invariably about a subject other than themselves, although the narrator will be intimately included in the story. What’s more, the subject—whatever it is—has been carefully researched and described or explained in such a way as to make a lasting impression on readers.

Personal experience, research and spontaneous intellectual discourse—an airing and exploration of ideas—are equally vital elements in creative nonfiction. Annie Dillard, another prominent creative nonfiction writer, takes great pains to achieve this balance in her work. In her first book, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” which won the Pulitzer Prize, and in her other books and essays, Dillard repeatedly overwhelms her readers with factual information: minutely detailed descriptions of insects, botany and biology, history and anthropology, blended with her own feelings about life.

One of my favorite Dillard essays, “Schedules,” focuses on the importance of writers working on a regular schedule rather than writing only intermittently. In this essay, she discusses, among many other subjects, Hasidism, chess, baseball, warblers, pine trees, June bugs, writers’ studios and potted plants—as well as her own schedule and writing habits and those of Wallace Stevens and Jack London.

What I am saying is that the genre of creative nonfiction is open to anyone with a curious mind and a sense of self. The research phase actually launches and anchors the creative effort. Whether it is a book or essay I am planning, I always begin my quest in the library (or, increasingly, online) for three reasons. First, I need to familiarize myself with the subject. If I don’t know much about it, I want to make myself knowledgeable enough to ask intelligent questions when I begin interviewing people. If I can’t display at least a minimal understanding of the subject about which I want to write, I will lose the confidence and support of the people who must provide me access to the experience.

Second, I want to assess my competition. What other essays, books and articles have been written about this subject? Who are the experts, the pioneers, the most controversial figures? I want to find a new angle—not write a story similar to one that has already been written. And finally, how can I reflect on and evaluate a person, subject or place unless I know all of the contrasting points of view? Reflection may permit a certain amount of speculation, but only when based on a solid foundation of knowledge.

This brings me to the fourth R: “reading.” Writers must read not only the research material unearthed in the library but also the work of the masters of their profession. I have heard some very fine writers claim that they don’t read too much any more or that they don’t read for long periods, especially during the time they are laboring on a lengthy writing project. But almost all writers have read the best writers in their field and are able to converse in great detail about their stylistic approaches and the intellectual content of their work, much as any good visual artist is able to discuss the work of Picasso, Van Gogh, Michelangelo and Warhol.

Finally, there’s the fifth R: the “’riting,” the most artistic and romantic aspect of the whole experience. The first four R’s relate to the nonfiction part of creative nonfiction; this last R is the phase where writers get to create. This often happens in two phases: Usually there is an inspirational explosion at the beginning, a time when writers allow instinct and feeling to guide their fingers as they create paragraphs, pages and even entire chapters or complete essays. This is what art of any form is all about: the passion of the moment and the magic of the muse. I am not saying this always happens; it doesn’t. Writing is a difficult labor in which a daily grind or struggle (ideally with a regular schedule, as Annie Dillard concludes) is inevitable. But this first part of the experience— for most writers, most of the time—is rather loose and spontaneous and, therefore, more creative and fun. The second part of the writing experience—the craft part, which comes into play after your basic essay is written—is equally important and a hundred times more difficult.

The Building Blocks of Creative Nonfiction: Scene, Dialogue, Intimate Detail and Other Essentials

The craft part means the construction of the essay (or chapter or even book):how the research, reflection and real life experience are arranged to make a story meaningful and important to readers.

The primary way this is accomplished in creative nonfiction is through the use of scene. In fact, one of the most obvious distinguishing factors between traditional journalism and creative nonfiction—or simply between ordinary prose and good, evocative writing—is the use of vignettes, episodes and other slices of reality. The uninspired writer will tell the reader about a subject, place or personality, but the creative nonfiction writer will show that subject, place or personality in action.

There’s an easy way to see how essential scene is to building a story; I like to call it “The Yellow Test.” Take a yellow highlighter or magic marker and leaf through your favorite magazine—Vanity Fair, Esquire, The New Yorker or Creative Nonfiction—or return to a favorite chapter in a book by an author like Annie Dillard or John McPhee. Highlight the scenes, the passages—large or small—where things happen. Then return to the beginning and review your handiwork. Chances are, anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of each essay or chapter will be yellow. (This test works equally well with other forms of creative writing: Plays are obviously constructed of scenes, as are novels and short stories and films. Even most poems are very scenic.)

But what makes a scene? First and foremost, a scene contains action. Something happens. I jump on my motorcycle and go helter-skelter around the country; suddenly, in the middle of July in Yellowstone National Park, I am confronted with 20 inches of snow. Action needn’t be wild, sexy and death-defying, however. There’s also action in the classroom: A student asks a question, which requires an answer, which necessitates a dialogue, which is a marvelously effective tool to trigger or record action.

Dialogue, another important element of creative nonfiction, means people saying things to one another, expressing themselves. It is a valuable element of scene. Collecting dialogue is one of the reasons writers immerse themselves at a police station, bagel shop or zoo. It lets them discover what people have to say spontaneously—not just in response to a reporter’s questions.

Another technique that helps writers create scene may be described as “intimate and specific detail.” This is a lesson that writers of all genres need to know: The secret to making prose (or, for that matter, poetry) memorable—and, therefore, vital and important—is to catalogue with specificity the details that are most intimate. By intimate, I mean ideas and images that readers won’t easily imagine—ideas and images you observed that symbolize a memorable truth about the characters or the situations about which you are writing. Intimate means recording and noting details that the reader might not know or even imagine without your particular inside insight. Sometimes intimate detail can be so specific and special that it becomes unforgettable in the reader’s mind.

A very famous “intimate” detail appears in a classic creative nonfiction profile, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” written by Gay Talese in 1966 and published in Esquire. In this profile, Talese leads readers on a whirlwind cross-country tour, revealing Sinatra and his entourage interacting with one another and with the rest of the world, and demonstrating how Sinatra’s world and the world inhabited by everyone else often collide. The scenes are action-oriented; they contain dialogue and evocative description, including a moment when Talese spotted a gray-haired lady with a tiny satchel in the shadows of the Sinatra entourage and put her in the story. She was, it turned out, the guardian of Sinatra’s collection of toupees. This tiny detail—Sinatra’s wig lady—made such an impression when I first read the essay that even now, years later, any time I see Sinatra on television or in rerun movies, or spot his photo in a magazine, I find myself searching the background for the gray-haired lady with the satchel.

The gray-haired lady was a detail that readers wouldn’t have known about if Talese hadn’t shown it to them, and her constant presence there in the shadows—hovering to service or replace Sinatra’s toupee— offered important insight into Sinatra’s character. And although we can’t achieve such symbolism each time we capture an incident, writers who want their words to be remembered beyond the dates on which their stories are published or broadcast will seek to discover the special observations that symbolize the intimacy they have attained with their subjects.

Of course, all of these vividly told scenes have to be organized according to some larger plan to make a complete story. We call this plan, or structure, the frame of the story. The frame represents a way of ordering or controlling a writer’s narrative so that the elements of his book, article or essay are presented in an interesting and orderly fashion with an interlaced integrity from beginning to end.

The most basic frame is a simple beginning-to-end chronology. For example, “Hoop Dreams,” a dramatic documentary (which is classic creative nonfiction in a different medium) begins with two African American teenage basketball stars living in a ghetto and sharing a dream of stardom in the NBA, and dramatically tracks both of their careers over the next six years.

Other frames are very complicated; in the movie, “Pulp Fiction,” Quentin Tarantino skillfully tangles and manipulates time. For a variety of reasons, writers often choose not to frame their stories in a strictly chronological sequence. My book “One Children’s Place” begins in the operating room at a children’s hospital. It introduces a surgeon, whose name is Marc Rowe; his severely handicapped patient, Danielle; and her mother, Debbie, who has dedicated her every waking moment to Danielle. Two years of her life have been spent inside the walls of this building with parents and children from all around the world whose lives are too endangered to leave the confines of the hospital. As Danielle’s surgery goes forward, the reader tours the hospital in a very intimate way, observing in the emergency room; participating in helicopter rescue missions as part of the emergency trauma team; and attending ethics meetings, well-baby clinics, child abuse examinations— every conceivable activity that happens at a typical high-acuity children’s hospital—so that readers will learn from the inside out how such an institution and the people it serves and supports function on an hour-by-hour basis. We even learn about Marc Rowe’s guilty conscience for having slighted his own wife and children over the years so that he can care for other families.

The book ends when Danielle is released from the hospital. It took me two years to research and write this book, returning day and night to the hospital in order to understand the hospital and the people who made it special, but the story in which it is framed begins and ends in a few months.

A Code for Creative Nonfiction Writers

Finally, harder to define than the elements of craft are all the ethical and moral issues writers of creative nonfiction have to consider—the kinds of questions audiences ask me about whenever I speak about the creative nonfiction genre, the kinds of questions that lead me to proclaim that I am not, and do not want to be, the creative nonfiction police.

But I will recommend a code for creative nonfiction writers—a kind of checklist. The word checklist is carefully chosen; there are no rules, laws or specific prescriptions dictating what you can or can’t do as a creative nonfiction writer. The gospel according to Lee Gutkind doesn’t and shouldn’t exist. It’s more a question of doing the right thing, following the Golden Rule: Treat others with courtesy and respect. First, strive for the truth. Be certain that everything you write is as accurate and honest as you can make it. I don’t mean that everyone who has shared the experience you are writing about should agree that your account is true. As I said, everyone has his or her own very precious and private and shifting truth. But be certain your narrative is as true to your memory as possible.

Second, recognize the important distinction between recollected conversation and fabricated dialogue. Don’t make anything up, and don’t tell your readers what you think your characters are thinking during the time about which you are writing. If you want to know how or what people are or were thinking, then ask them. Don’t assume or guess.

Third, don’t round corners—or compress situations or characters— unnecessarily. Not that it’s absolutely wrong to round corners or compress characters or incidents, but if you do experiment with these techniques, make certain you have a good reason. Making literary decisions based on good narrative principles is often legitimate—you are, after all, writers. But stop to consider the people about whom you are writing. Unleash your venom on the guilty parties; punish them as they deserve. But also ask yourself: Who are the innocent victims? How have you protected them? Adults can file suit against you, but are you violating the privacy or endangering the emotional stability of children? Are you being fair to the aged or infirm?

Fourth, one way to protect the characters in your book, article or essay is to allow them to defend themselves—or at least to read what you have written about them. Few writers do this, because they are afraid of litigation or ashamed or embarrassed about the intimacies they have revealed. But sharing your narrative with the people about whom you are writing doesn’t mean that you have to change what you say about them; rather, it only means that you are being responsible to your characters and their stories. I understand why you would not want to share your narrative; it could be dangerous. It could ruin your friendship, your marriage, your future. But by the same token, this is the kind of responsible action you might appreciate if the shoe were on the other foot. I have, on occasion, shared parts of books with the characters I have written about with positive results. First, my characters corrected my mistakes. But, more important, when you come face to face with a character, you are able to communicate on a different and deeper level. When you show them what you think and feel, when they read what you have written, they may get angry—an action in itself that is interesting to observe and even to write about.

Or they may feel obliged to provide their side of the situation— a side that you have been hesitant to listen to or interpret. With the text in the middle, as a filter, it is possible to discuss personal history as a story somewhat disconnected from the reality you are universally experiencing. It provides a way to communicate as an exercise in writing—it filters and distances the debate. Moreover, it defines and cements your own character. The people about whom you have written may not like what you have said—and may, in fact, despise you for saying it—but they can only respect and admire the forthright way in which you have approached them. No laws govern the scope of good taste and personal integrity.

The creative nonfiction writer must rely on his or her own conscience and sensitivity to others, and display a higher morality and a healthy respect for fairness and justice. We all harbor resentments, hatreds and prejudices, but being writers doesn’t give us special dispensation to behave in ways that are unbecoming to ourselves and hurtful to others. This rationale sounds so simple—yet, it is so difficult. The moral and ethical responsibility of the creative nonfiction writer is to practice the golden rule and to be as fair and truthful as possible—to write both for art’s sake and for humanity’s sake. In other words, we police ourselves.

By saying this, I do not feel that I am being overly simplistic. As writers we intend to make a difference, to affect someone’s life over and above our own. To say something that matters—this is why we write, after all. That’s the bottom line: to impact society, to put a personal stamp on history, to plant the seed of change. Art and literature are our legacies to other generations. We will be forgotten, most of us writers, but our books and essays, our stories and poems will always, somewhere, have a life.

Wherever you personally draw lines in your writing, remember the basic rules of good citizenship: Do not recreate incidents and characters who never existed; do not write to do harm to innocent victims; do not forget your own story but, while considering your struggle and the heights of your achievements, think repeatedly about how your story will affect your reader. Over and above the creation of a seamless narrative, you are seeking to touch and affect someone else’s life—which is the goal creative nonfiction writers share with novelists and poets. We all want to connect with another human being— or as many people as possible—in such a way that they will remember us and share our legacy with others.

Someday, I hope to connect with the woman with the badge and the bare feet, face-to-face. I have never forgotten her. She has, in some strange way, become my conscience, standing over me as I write, forcing me to ask the questions about my work that I have recommended to you. I hope we all feel her shadow over our shoulders each time we sit down, face the keyboard and begin to write.

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Are you a time optimist? Why some people are perennially late – and how to be more punctual

While timekeepers naturally arrive early, time optimists set off with the assumption the lights will be green and the roads will be empty, getting ever more anxious as the minutes tick away. The good news? Change is possible

T he other day, I was waiting on a train platform, seething with irritation. The service was delayed, which meant I was going to be late meeting a friend at the theatre. It did not help that the venue was on the other side of London. It was one I had never visited before, so I had no idea how long it would take to walk from the station.

“Running just a wee bit late,” I text-fibbed, feeling a rush of remorse. I am not usually spectacularly late, unless I am extremely stressed, and then things turn ugly. I recall the time I had to do an interview with a French actor; unusually, our rendezvous was in the early evening at a cafe. I was already behind schedule and then got hopelessly lost. When I finally turned up, she was blotto, an empty bottle of red in front of her, and furious. More recently, it was the final day of my university degree show and we had to take down our frames by 4pm sharp when the building would close. But I was having a lovely lunch with friends and hadn’t noticed the time. At one minute to four, I was racing along the street when I tripped over a paving stone and went flying. That one cost me the use of my shoulder for nine months.

I hate being late. So why does it happen so frequently?

Michaela Thomas, a Swedish clinical psychologist, says I may be what is known as a “time optimist”, or as the Swedes say a “tidsoptimist”. “A tidsoptimist is a person who underestimates how long something takes, and also overestimates how much time they have at their disposal,” she says. “So they will often be late for appointments, or rush things at the last minute, and this can create stress for themselves and others.”

The word has a friendly ring to it. Can it sometimes be used as a term of endearment? “It’s not very endearing to have someone perpetually arrive half an hour late for meet-ups, as it can signal: ‘My time is more important than yours’, and it can be perceived as disrespectful,” she says. “Really it depends on the impact the tendency to misjudge time has on others.”

Oh dear. Therein lies the problem with lateness – it doesn’t just create havoc and negative consequences for the perpetrator, but for loved ones and colleagues as well. Moira, a legal assistant, shudders at the memory of when she was due to attend a meeting in Poland with her manager. “As a trainee, it was a huge deal. I slept in, waking up at home in Bristol an hour before check-in closed at Heathrow. Terrified of what would happen, I tried to make it through M4 rush-hour traffic – and obviously didn’t. I had to come up with some feeble excuse about the car that was clearly invented.” Moira has always been “punctually challenged”, as she puts it. “My friend’s dad used to pick me up from school and always said he’d be there 15 minutes before he really would, because he knew I’d be late.”

Sarah Goodall (not her real name) recalls the time she got lost on the way to the funeral of a dear colleague. “I was so late, I ended up running down the street towards the venue. Suddenly, I looked up and realised I was actually racing alongside the hearse. Maybe the driver realised what was happening because he slowed down so I could dash into the ceremony and at least attempt to look composed before the family arrived.”

Given we know that unpunctuality is liable to exasperate and enrage others, why do latecomers find it so hard to mend their ways? “We are born this way,” says Grace Pacie, a fellow member of the late, late club and the author of Late! A Timebender’s Guide to Why We Are Late and How We Can Change. “Carl Jung first identified it in his work on personality types.” People fall into one of two categories, according to Jung: realistic “sensates” and dreamy “intuitives”. The latter type struggle with effectively judging time.

Pacie suggests that at one end of the spectrum there are the “timekeepers” who work at a steady pace, are organised and naturally finish early. And then there are people like me, the “ timebenders ”, who always push things right up to the last minute.

“Latecomers are a very easy target for condemnation,” Pacie says. “But we have great qualities as well. We see time as flexible and can speed up when needed. We get energised by deadlines and are able to be on time when it matters. We often feel we produce our most creative work when we are under time pressure. Timebenders typically do 80% of their work in the last 20% of the time before a deadline – we enjoy the adrenaline buzz we get from working under time pressure.”

Given that I work in a deadline-driven job, I can identify with much of what Pacie is saying. But I wonder how this plays out in a social context. I’m pretty sure I’m not getting an adrenaline buzz every time I fail to arrive for an appointment on time.

Pacie believes there is a subconscious behaviour driving lateness – the dread of being early. “Typically, we plan to arrive right on time, not ahead of time. It took me a long while to understand that if I am going on a journey that takes 10 minutes, I definitely shouldn’t leave the house with just 10 minutes to spare. Allowing time for something to go wrong is essential. We optimistically assume all the lights will be green and the roads will be empty.” I experience a horrible jolt of recognition when she tells me this. It explains why despite my best intentions, I frequently arrive five or 10 minutes behind schedule.

What about the common criticism that the habitually late have “poor time-management skills”? Fuschia Sirois, professor of social and health psychology at Durham University, doesn’t think much of it. “It’s a very simplistic and superficial view, particularly when it comes to lateness caused by procrastination.”

Her research has focused on why people fail to start or complete an assignment or chore on time. “Procrastination often has nothing to do with time management,” she says. “It’s about poor mood management. It means the person can’t regulate difficult emotions about a particular task, so they put it off. They may be anxious, fear failure or feel frustrated. Or they might focus on the outcome and how that is going to affect their future, which only adds more pressure. Or sometimes, people are just maxed out – they have too much going on with work and family. In all those scenarios, people are tempted to opt for the quick and easy fix – to delay working on the thing. That gives immediate relief.”

I mention that I typically procrastinate over filling out my tax return, but that it is something that doesn’t involve strong emotions – it’s just really tedious. Here, Sirois says, the issue may be the lack of autonomy. In situations where we don’t have much control – hello, HMRC – we are more likely to procrastinate. The payoff is that we get the rebellious feeling of freedom that we can do things in our own time.

One remedy, Sirois suggests, is to have a more realistic relationship with your future self. “Say you’re up against a deadline but you’re feeling tired and uninspired? There’s a great temptation to imagine that future you – tomorrow/next week/next month is magically going to feel enthusiastic and brimming with the best ideas. Ask yourself, will you really have changed that much by tomorrow/next week when you intend to tackle the task? And if you really can do everything next week, why not do it today? Chances are that future you is going to be even more stressed by the task when it’s late.”

That habitual tardiness might be caused by certain personality traits is one thing, but now a growing number of people are suggesting that poor punctuality is a symptom of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), known as “time blindness”. The phrase went viral after one woman’s tearful post appeared on TikTok this summer complaining that her employer wouldn’t accept “time blindness” as a reason to show up late for work. Although some commenters mocked the video, psychologists assert that it is a real condition.

“For neurodivergent people, like some ADHDers, it can be nearly impossible to arrive on time and get organised for a deadline,” says Thomas. “If you have ADHD, it’s not your fault if it is very challenging to manage your time, as it is related to issues with executive function in the frontal lobes of your brain. Time blindness is a perception problem, of not having a sense of how much time passes or how much time there is left.”

It can also lead to organisational chaos. “I have ADHD and I’m well known for being late to everything,” says Bryony Lewis, who runs an online gift shop. “The worst one was when I was 24 hours late to a hospital appointment. It was in another town, and after I’d travelled all that way, the very confused receptionist finally figured it out for me.”

Whatever the root causes, what can serial latecomers do to mend their ways? Pacie has some ideas. “If you’re going to a big event like a wedding or catching a flight, create a pre-event deadline which you can be late for. Then when you’re late for that, it doesn’t matter – you’ve built in a buffer.” You might, for example, arrange to meet friends at a pub or cafe beforehand. If all else fails and you really don’t trust yourself to arrive on time, there is always the last resort. “Book a hotel next to the location.”

Regular fixtures, such as a fitness class or choir practice, are common danger zones for punctuality. “We subconsciously cut the time down to the shortest time we’ve ever taken,” says Pacie. “Again, finding something to do close to your location beforehand is a good idea, whether it’s meeting a friend or something that you really want to do.”

She also has some general tips for any occasion, including putting alerts on your phone for when you need to get ready rather than when you need to leave. It is also a good idea to create a new routine where the last things you do before leaving the house are not vital activities such as eating or putting in contact lenses, but tasks that could be skipped, such as taking out the recycling or applying elaborate makeup.

The good news is that sometimes being late can work to a person’s advantage. Photographer Carolyn Mendelsohn was excited about attending a workshop organised by the Royal Photographic Society in Manchester. It would be an opportunity to show her work to an influential curator, Zelda Cheatle, and get feedback.

Unfortunately, she got the day wrong, only realising after the workshop had started – and she lived two hours away. “But something told me I needed to be there, so I got in the car and went anyway. I ran huffing and puffing into the building and found the room where the workshop was in full flow. I snuck in the back, then I crept around to the front to sneak my work on to the table. Lots of funny looks. As I sat back in my chair, the satnav on my phone announced loudly: ‘You have reached your destination.’” At this point, she was four hours late.

“All eyes turned, and Zelda looked up and said curtly: ‘I think we know you are here.’”

It could have ruined the whole day. But when the time came to show Cheatle her work, a series of portraits of girls called Being Inbetween , the curator remembered her and they had something to joke about. Cheatle ended up not only mentoring the photographer, but writing the foreword to her published photobook. In it, she mentions the first time they met – and how very late Mendelsohn was.

So, what should you do if your friend or partner is consistently late? Pacie suggests taking a hard line and never lying about start times. “As soon as a timebender realises that you have lied about a deadline, they will start to anticipate it and arrive even later.”

“And don’t get mad,” she says, especially if you live together and their behaviour often makes both of you late for events. “If you start to shout every time they are late, they will just take this as their starting signal and they won’t get moving until they hear you shouting. See if you can find a different signal. My husband plays bass guitar and when he is ready to leave, he starts to practise. When I hear that sound, I know I’m late. He doesn’t get mad and he gets lots of practice.”

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• Mental health
• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

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Psychology Spot

All About Psychology

If you’re always late you are a creative person

We all arrived late for a meeting, at least in one occasion. But there are people who can be classified as  “chronic latecomers” , because are always late. If you’re one of them here’s a good new: the lack of punctuality may be related to creativity and optimism. In fact, a study conducted at the San Diego State University revealed that people who are always late tend to be more creative.

The type B personality is located at the base of latecoming

In fact, few studies have been done about latecoming. However, a recent study examined 181 workers in New York trying to understand the causes of their delay. These psychologists have found that people who arrive late share a common factor: a type B personality.

That is, they are people who do not usually run from side to side as if their biological clock goes faster than the rest of mortals, but prefer to take their time, and we rarely see them tense or anxious. These people really enjoy their free time and peace of mind, they don’t have the need to fill their days with more activities and be extremely productive.

And exactly this tranquility is what allows them to take the necessary time to analyze problems and find better solutions, so they also tend to be more creative than others. In fact, they are people who are not overwhelmed by little things, they do not care about details but are able to focus on the big picture, which greatly expands their universe of possibilities and allows them find ingenious solutions to problems.

In practice, the fact of being late to appointments is conditioned by the characteristics of the personality, which, in turn, are the same causing that some people are more creative than others.

A distorted perception of time

Beyond personality characteristics, it also seems that people who arrive late are not able to accurately gauge the time passing. In practice, they always feel having more time available or that will end up activities faster, so they tend to be late.

In fact, it turned out that for who has a type A personality one minute passes in 58 seconds, while people with a Type B personality estimate that a minute passes in 77 seconds. This indicates a 17 seconds difference, which added to several hours, can cause a significant delay in their daily lives. In practice, it is as if their biological clock was slower.

Tips for latecomers

Although the delay is related to creativity, the truth is that in many cultures the delay is perceived as a lack of respect for those who wait. In fact, being late often triggers a negative cycle. First, the person who is late conveys a negative image because the delay is considered synonymous of disorganization and lack of professionalism. As a result, the person loses credibility.

Moreover, delays affect negatively the encounter with the other person, generating a feeling of anger that is not good for the relationship, both personal and professional. Therefore, it is better to learn to be punctual. Here are some tips to succeed:

 1. Get organized.  Some people arrive late for lack of organization. When it’s time to go out they don’t find the keys or the mobile phone, so they lose a few precious minutes. Therefore, the first step to be on time is to be organized, both at home and at work. It will also be useful to keep a diary to help you plan your days.

 2. Find out where you lose time.  Often our bad habits are what make us being late. To retrieve the time you need to identify those habits that become black’s holes through which time vanishes. At this point you only have to make sure that those bad habits disappear, replacing them with better habits.

 3. Schedule a margin of error.  Some people are late because they always go against the clock. But you should always keep in mind that you might encounter a traffic jam or the meeting could last longer than expected. Therefore, you should always plan a margin of 15-20 minutes. If you arrive early you can use these minutes to relax and prepare for the meeting.

 4. Get used to wear a watch.  If you have problems to arrange the time required for each activity, the best way for not being late is to look at the clock from time to time. Another possibility is to activate the alarm on your phone.

 5. Valorize time.  In fact, time is the only valuable asset we have. Therefore, it is best not to waste it and do not let others wasting it for our fault. Valuing time in perspective will allow you become aware of the importance of punctuality.

Conte, J. M. et. Al. (2001) Individual Differences in Attentional Strategies in Multitasking Situations. Human Performance; 14(4): 339-358. Conte, J. M. et. Al. (2001) Incremental Validity of Time Urgency and Other Type A Subcomponents in Predicting Behavioral and Health Criteria. Journal of Applied Social Psychology; 31(8): 1727-1748.

Jennifer Delgado

I am a psychologist and I spent several years writing articles for scientific journals specialized in Health and Psychology. I want to help you create great experiences. Learn more about me .

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66 Night Journal Prompts: Fun and Creative Writing Ideas for Late Nights

By: Author Valerie Forgeard

Posted on Published: September 30, 2022  - Last updated: December 26, 2023

Categories Creativity , Inspiration , Self Improvement , Writing

Do you have trouble falling asleep at night? Or maybe you find yourself wide awake at 3 a.m., unable to get your mind to stop racing. If so, you might benefit from keeping a night journal.

Night journaling is a great way to relax and clear your head before bed. It can also be a fun, creative outlet when you can’t sleep!

This article will provide some fun, and creative writing prompts for late-night journaling. We hope these prompts help you get more restful sleep and unleash your inner creativity !

66 Night Journal Prompts

First, choose a writing prompt you feel most comfortable with to get started on your bedtime journaling:

Daily Routine

• What time did you go to bed last night?
• What time did you wake up today?
• What surprised you today?
• What did you do today?

Thoughts and Feelings

• What’s going through your mind right now?
• What are you worried about?
• What thoughts interfere with your sleep?
• What thoughts are on your mind right now?

Reflecting on the Day

• What did you like best about this day?
• What was the best part of your day?
• What was the worst part of your day?
• What did you learn today?

Tomorrow’s Goals

• What do you want to accomplish tomorrow?
• What do you hope will happen tomorrow?
• How can you make tomorrow better than today?

Relationships

• What were people like today?
• How did important people make you feel?
• Who did you spend time with this week?

Personal Growth

• What challenges do you face this week?
• What’s the hardest decision recently?
• What inspires you the most? Why?

Dreams and Sleep

• Describe your last dream in detail
• What thoughts disrupt your sleep?
• How can improve your sleep habits?
• What helps you feel better on bad day?
• What makes you afraid?
• What’s your favorite childhood memory ?

Self-Reflection

• Why do you react to certain people that way?
• What’s influenced you & how?
• What throws you off track?
• Write three things grateful for this week
• What inspires imagination & heart?
• What’s something makes life wonderful?

Inspiration

• Who do you admire & why?
• Who’re the special people in your life?
• Who motivates & excites you daily?

Happiness and Joy

• What brings happiness & joy?
• What makes other people laugh?
• What makes you feel angry/frustrated?

Family and Friends

• What’s your family like?
• Who’s important in your life & why?
• How do loved ones make you feel?

Career and Life Purpose

• What’s your current goal/dream?
• Have any dreams come true lately?
• What’s the best career if money no object?

Emotions and Challenges

• Do you regret anything & why?
• What are you afraid of?
• What makes you feel connected to nature?

Growth and Change

• What do you want to do before dying?
• What needs improvement to grow?
• What advice helps make dreams real?

Perspective and Wellness

• Where would you travel if could tomorrow?
• What does gratitude mean to you?
• How care for mental health better?
• What makes you feel most alone?
• What’s meaning of night to you?

Life Experiences

• Describe childhood in short story
• What impacts people besides yourself?
• What’s an important lesson lately?
• What makes you proud or accomplished?

Imagination

• If I ask God a question, what’s it be?
• What do you wish to tell you earlier?
• What’s your dream home like?
• What change in world if could change one thing?
• What is the best dream you ever had? What was it?
• How nature feels most connected to you?

Writing a Diary Before Going to Bed Can Help to Prepare for the Morning Better

Writing a diary at night has many benefits. One of them is the opportunity to reflect on your day. The end of the day is an excellent time to reflect on the day’s events.

A bedtime journal can be a great way to start your day with focus, clarity, and intention.

Here are some ways a sleep journal can help you better prepare for tomorrow:

• It helps you clear your mind so you can fall asleep more easily.
• It helps you organize your thoughts to wake up refreshed and ready to tackle the day ahead.
• It helps you identify problems that must be solved before they become more extensive during the day or week.
• It helps you identify patterns or trends that may be affecting your mood or productivity at work or at home.

A Bedtime Journal Is a Great Way to Wind Down and Relax Before Bed.

Not only will evening journal prompts help you feel more in control of your negative emotions and stress, but they may also help you sleep better.

Throughout the day, your mind gathers a lot of information and thoughts. A bedtime journal allows you to reflect on the day’s events positively.

You can write your journal prompts in bed with pen and paper or on the computer. The most important thing is to keep it consistent so you don’t lose momentum.

The first step is to find a quiet place where no one will disturb you while you write in your journal. Make sure there are no distractions like ringing phones or people nearby so you can focus on what you want to write about.

Take some time each night to write about one journaling prompt, whether it’s just 5 minutes or an hour before bed. It doesn’t matter how long you take, as long as you repeat it every night!

Nightly Journal Writing Is a Technique That Helps You Get to Know Yourself Better

In it, you write down your thoughts and feelings as they come to you at night before you go to bed.

The benefits of night journaling practice include:

• It helps you relax. Night journaling habits can be relaxing and meditative. It also helps you clear your mind before bed, making it easier to fall asleep faster and longer.
• It helps you deal with stress, anxiety, and depression. Night journals are beneficial for people who have difficulty expressing themselves verbally or in writing when they feel anxious or depressed. When you write something down, you can get rid of pent-up emotions without dealing with the consequences of speaking out loud (or in front of others).
• You can improve your memory and cognitive function by recording your progress. Keeping a night journal is a way to track how things are going for you – what’s working well for you and what’s not – so that, over time, you can see if you need to change anything to make life better overall.

How Much Time Should I Spend on a Night Journal?

The main purpose of the night journal is to record the day’s events so you can look back on them later and see how much your life has changed over time. It’s also a good way to reflect on what you’ve learned so far in your life and what kind of person you want to be. Night journals are personal, but they’re also public – because anyone can read them!

At first glance, keeping night journals may seem like a waste of time or an unnecessary task that keeps you from doing other things that need to get done.

For example, if you get home late from work or school and only have 15 minutes before bed, you may wonder if writing just one sentence about your day (or maybe none) is worth it.

Journaling Improves Self-Awareness

Writing down everything that happened during the day (and how you felt about it) helps you develop better self-awareness about yourself and others.

You Can Also Use It as a Dream Journal

Some people use a diary to write down their thoughts and feelings. Others use it as a dream journal, writing their dreams every morning.

If you’re wondering why someone would write down their dreams, there are many reasons. One of the most common is that dream interpretation is popular in many cultures, including Western culture.

Another reason is that some people find their dreams interesting and enjoy reading about other people’s dreams.

It’s also a reason for keeping a dream journal that it helps with insomnia – if you wake up in the middle of the night, it can be difficult to get back to sleep if your mind is busy with thoughts or worries.

If you already have your dreams written down, your mind will be busy reading them instead of worrying about what you’ve to do tomorrow or what happened yesterday.

A dream journal doesn’t have to be just for writing down your dreams; you can also use it as a night journal where you write down all the things that happened the day before you go to sleep – who did or said what, when, etc. Wake up in the morning and remember something significant that happened yesterday (or earlier in the evening). You can quickly check your evening journal to see if it’s mentioned.

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If you appreciated this article, you might also find our “365 Journal Prompts for All Year” engaging and beneficial. It’s designed to keep your journaling journey interesting and insightful every day.

365 Journal Prompts to Help You Reflect, Grow, and Connect: A Year of Self-Discovery

Why You’re Not Writing

by Guest Blogger | 110 comments

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Sometimes after people learn I’m a writer, they confess to me in private they have a book inside them. They dream about it and long to make that happen.

I know others who talk a lot about writing. They post writerly quotes on social media, links to publishing articles and always know the latest industry buzz. Another set are voracious readers; they can discuss a variety of cool topics or brainstorm story ideas. They love the whole literary scene.

What all these folks share in common is…

They’re not writing.

What Not Writing Looks Like

Talking about writing is not writing.

Reading is not writing.

Outlining is not writing.

Okay the last one is, but not excessively so. Writers write.

Stop talking. Start doing.

Time will Tell

We all have the same twenty-four hours. Dreaming of writing is easy. Making yourself sit down and do it, is not.

“How you spend your time is how you spend your life.” I love this quote by Carol Lloyd, author of Creating a Life Worth Living . The book is several years old (1997) both still full of applicable advice on how strike a balance between a creative life, as well as life with sanity, happiness and financial solvency. Lloyd offers down-to-earth solutions and concrete tasks for achieving these goals.

There’s nothing mystical or magical about writing. It’s work — hard work.

However, most of us could scrounge up 15 minutes each day to write. Maybe more with practice.

How to Steal Time to Write

Here are a few suggestions to help you squeeze out more time for the page:

*Cut back on social media or ditch it altogether — why build a platform when you’re not creating anything for others to read?

*Write first thing in the morning, or late at night — I love this Write Practice guest post on the topic:  The Ideal Schedule to Become a More Productive Writer .

*Form an accountability group — there’s something powerful when you tell others, “I’m gonna do this,” then do it.

*Write during your lunch hour or coffee breaks — John Grisham wrote during his courtroom breaks, and he’s done okay (275 millions books sold).

*Write on the weekends, or on your day off — being a weekend novelist is better than none at all.

*Write, even when you cannot write — while you’re stuck in traffic, or folding laundry…think about how solve plotting problems, ideas for blog posts, agents to query.

*Carry a notebook with you wherever you go — jot down notes or plot out scenes. Many phones have a voice recorder for ideas or writing To Do's. Use what you have, wherever you are.

* Write in spurts —  don’t think you must have two hours of uninterrupted time. Steal five minutes here and there. It all adds up.

Why Don’t You Write?

When I explain to these wannabe writers there’s nothing extra special about me. I wanted to write more than anything else, so I made it a priority. I started writing. I ask them, “Why don’t you write?”

Many tell me about their scheduling conflicts and other problems. Some of them are quite legitimate, while others are just excuses.

The truth of why most of you don’t write as much as you want (or at all) is you’re afraid.

You worry your work isn’t good enough. You think no one will ever want to read what you wrote. You’re afraid of success or failure, or both.

Yeah, me, too. Join the club. Fear is the #1 enemy of writers and masks itself in a variety of ways: doubt, perfectionism, procrastination, self-sabotage, etc.

4 Writing Facts

I hope these four truths help you see the reality of writing and encourage you to make more time for your craft:

• In the beginning, you may not be very good. It's normal.
• If you practice, you will get better.
• Regardless of #2, you will still get rejected. You’ll survive. You don’t think so, but you will.
• If you stick with writing and persevere despite doubt and rejections, you will achieve some form of success.

Will it be publication?

I don’t know what the future holds for you, but I do know writers have more options available to you than ever before. It's exciting.

All this comes down to one simple question:

How important is your writing to you?

Don’t tell me the answer. Show me. It’s the WHY you do or do not write.

Because how you spend your time is how you spend your life.

How do you use or abuse time to write?  Think about it and let us know in the comments section .

For  fifteen minutes , write a scene with a person struggling to be any kind of creative (writer, painter, dancer, entrepreneur, etc.).

When your time is up, share your practice in the comments section. And if you share, please be sure to give feedback to your fellow writers.

Happy writing!

Guest Blogger

This article is by a guest blogger. Would you like to write for The Write Practice? Check out our guest post guidelines .

110 Comments

ARRGGHHH!! Here I sit, mushy keys on keyboard and blinking cursor.

“So write something,” I yell behind my eyeballs!

“Yes,” says the muse, “Write something. Write anything. Feel the groove and just write. Let the words flow. Write about the traffic outside. Write about the current crowd here in Barnes and Noble. This is your writing place. So write, Gary, write. Write about taking Lola for her walk this morning. How she didn’t like the damp, didn’t like wet grass. Write how she gave you that “this is icky” look and stayed on the side walk. Write Gary, Write long. Write tall. Write small. Just write!!.”

“Ha, that fool,” scoffs the anti-muse? “He’s too stupid to write. No one wants to read what that fat old geezer writes. Groove? For him that’s just an endless rut going around a record player. Boop! Boop! Boop! Hear that? Thats the sound of his stupidity beating against his skull”

“Oh shutup the both of you,” I say, and finally press Submit .

Thanks for the smile, Gary. Some would say that poor fellow is schizophrenic, but we know better.

He’s a writer. 🙂

My favorite part of your piece? The anti-muse. That’s EXCELLENT and I’m officially adding it to my vocabulary!

“Stupidity beating against his skull” – #ROFLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL hahahahahahaha

LOVEEEEED this <3

#HUGSS Gary – wait, have you hidden a camera in my home? Because this is me…

I love your closing line, “Oh shutup, the both of you”. Sometimes we just have to silence those voices in our head! Thanks for sharing. : )

Very vividly written Gary – mushy keys brings into play what the blinking cursor doesn’t already shout. Had to smile…even though I feel your frustration! 🙂

H,i Gary. I always appreciate your posts and your stories. We all identify with your struggle, but believe me you’re not” too stupid to write.” Keep at it, post, submit and try again. Someone out there will hear your voice. By the way, thanks for your feedback on the story “The Last Inning”. I could not find a way to get back to it to thank you for your comments and your time. Your thoughts are appreciated!

Love the mushy keys and the line “Write long. Write tall. Write small. Just write!!” You have so perfectly captured the discrepancy between how easy it SHOULD be to write and how hard it ACTUALLY is. Thanks for sharing!

A nice short look into your inner dialog that we can all relate to.

I like the record player quip, great imagery, especially when you tie it to the sound of stupidity!

Keep it up. I enjoyed your thoughts.

It would be helpful to know why I can’t return to writing I posted so as to reply to inquires and comments on my work. Feedback is essential for growing writers and so is the capacity to communicate. I haven’t received any word as to why the page no longer exists after receiving an e-mail message from a reader/writer about material I’ve written. If a Write Practice Keymaster is reading this, please lend your assistance if possible. To the Write Practice Participants, has this ever happened to you?

I am not TWP Keymaster, but I apologize that this is happening. I’ll pass it on to the powers that be. Thanks for your patience.

“A Marcy a Day Keeps the Anti-Muse Away” – ha, see how I combined Gary’s comment and YOUR brilliance, Ms Mckay? 😛

Your every article brings a BIGGGGGGGGGG goofy smile onto my face – Muaaaaahhhhhhhh

Thank you, lovely lady. I ENJOYED the whole article, but the ending blew away my mind! 😀

Love your combination line. : )

HA, Kitto. Your sentiment is both fabulous and frightening on soooo many levels. Glad to make you smile. Write on, sister.

“I know others who talk a lot about writing. They post writerly quotes on social media, links to publishing articles and always know the latest industry buzz. Another set are voracious readers; they can discuss a variety of cool topics or brainstorm story ideas. They love the whole literary scene.”

SHEEPISH KITTO *grinning*

I write every day – for others. I have two huge projects within me. I might have to get up at 4 am though.

What the heck, let’s do it 😉

Do it or you will regret it – I only realised that I HAD to write my story in the past few weeks. I’m 62. All those wasted years toeing the party line when I should’ve been writing MY story.

Ugh. Been there met them. “They” are the ones that ALWAYS have to make a comment or have a question when at the end of a meeting you get down to the “Any questions?” “They” are also the ones that break out Strunk and White and post it PUBLICLY when you’ve made a blog post and tell your friends list about it and ask them for any comments they might have. Why do “They” always have to try to one up us?!?!

Don’t forsake sleep, Kitto. I learned the hard way that I could accomplish more in 1.5 hours with a full night’s rest, than writing from 4-7 am (3 hours) running on empty.

Honor yourself. Yeah, you’ve got to write for others to pay the bills, but write what is YOU. Let me bad, then keep at it until you like it, then love it.

I hope you DO IT!

I hesitate to reply on a blog post that demands 15 minutes of writing on a topic that is not immediately relevant to me. Then I realise that I have started. After all we all need to practise writing – I know when I look back at what I wrote 6 months ago, let alone 4 years ago, that it reads dreadfully. Practise really does make (nearly) perfect.

So the creative in my story is me. I am writing this as a stream of consciousness because I was not originally going to do it at all, except as a reply to your email rather than as a blog comment.

What stops me writing? Thinking I have nothing to write, but then I look around and I have a lot more to write than most people who write online. I can write a better ebook than 90% of the ones I have on my Kindle app. I have the ideas, I have the story, yes it’ll need tidying up, but I am getting it down on the screen, which is the important thing.

I only work under pressure, so this 15 minute deadline does the job foe me. Thanks for that.

I find it easier to write recently because I have started to write an outline, also read few books from Pschotactics. Sean d’Souza is amazing as a writer’s inspiration, and I love his cartoons too, but am not going to go there. I find Sean’s methodology just breaks down the task at hand into manageable chunks. At the same time it gives it more impact and makes readers more likely to actually read it.

Wonderful, wonderful, Phil. I’m so proud of you that you weren’t going to comment, but you chose to after all! Plus, you have an important message for everyone here at TWP: breaking down your tasking (writing/blogging/querying/publishing/etc. into MANAGEABLE CHUNKS.

That + practice are the secrets to success. Thank you!

Thanks Phil 🙂 I appreciate the note. Most people talk about writers not being able to write, or running into writer’s block (which is a complete myth, by the way). And the biggest problem is that most writing advice is simply not broken up into “consumable”, “workable” advice. The problem with how-to is that you have to understand what is how-not-to, before you explain how-to. I’m doing a podcast on that very thing today at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/three-month-vacation-podcast/id946996410?mt=2

Thanks for the post! I used to have all kinds of excuses about why I didn’t have time to write even though I felt my soul breaking in two from not writing. I now keep a writing journal and update it daily. I also keep track of my time in the journal, so I can challenge myself to write more each day. Plus, it’s a great way for me to keep track of the progress I’ve made, the challenges I’ve overcome, and the positive feedback I’ve received.

Awesome, Babbit. You could be the poster child for progress. I keep track of my time, too, so loved that you shared that tip. Thanks and keep up the great work!

“Billy! I have great news!” Clara Durant beamed.

“Oh, Clara, I have some great news, too!” her husband beamed back, as he picked her up and twirled her around. “But you go first.”

“Billy, I’m pregnant!”

“Ohhh, that is wonderful darling! What do you think it will be? How are you? When is it due? Are you okay?” The words tumbled out of the normally quiet and soft-spoken Billy in flurrious profusion.

“Yes, yes, Dr. Edwin says I’m just fine.”

“Edwin knew this and he didn’t tell me?”

“Well, dear, you were on your way to the Water Works meeting when he found out.”

“Oh that’s right. Which reminds me.”

“Reminds you of that?”

“My big news.”

“Oh, that’s right. I was so excited about our baby, I forgot. What is it?”

“Darling, I am going to change the way America travels!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I was on my way to meeting this afternoon. I ran into Dallas at the hardware store and, well, I couldn’t just ignore him, you know. So we said hi and talked for a minute or two. Right then young Johnny Alger stopped by and showed his new buggy. We couldn’t shut him up, so we listened as he explained how wonderful the ride was.

“Well, time passed and next thing you know I was going to be late. Johnny offered me a ride, and you know what? He is right — that little thing rides like a dream. It has this unusual suspension, you hardly feel the road!”

“Billy… is that it? Your big news is you were on time because Johnny gave you a ride on a new buggy?”

Billy laughed. “No, no, dear. That’s not the news. The news is tomorrow I’m going to…

You will have to wait to find out what Billy’s big news was, because my fifteen minutes are up. 🙂

Well, I’ve read lots of excuses to NOT write, but this is the first time I’ve seen excuse to not finish writing. Nice story, really, but do we get to find out what Billy is going to do tomorrow? 🙂

Picky stuff:

“I was on my way to meeting this afternoon.”

You need to add an article, definite the or indefinite a before meeting.

Sneaky one, you are William! A cliff hanger. Thanks for sharing. I look forward to learning Billy’s big news! 🙂

If I knew where you were, I’d take my walking stick to you, Master William.

Chloe stared at the blank screen. The blinking of the cursor only made her think of the Jeopardy tune, which only made matters worse – the pressure! It shouldn’t be this hard, therefore it had to be in her head, or maybe, in reality she didn’t have enough creativity in her head to write. Maybe if she did a little “pinning” on Pinterest it would take her mind off things, and of course, she would get right back to her story.

She sat her timer for 15 minutes to play on Pinterest and, honestly, only restarted it twice before she returned back to the blank screen and the blinking cursor – damn, still no creative juices flowing. The dryer buzzer went off signaling the end of its cycle. Maybe if she got up and folded the laundry – that would give her time to free up her writer’s block.

Clothes folded and put away, Chloe sauntered past her office door without glancing into the room. She would ignore it for now. Maybe a nice long walk would pick her energy level up and get her mind to cranking. It was a gorgeous sunny day as she took off on her 2 mile walk with her music blaring in her ears. This had to be the ticket.

Five hours later, one excuse after the other, she turned the lights off throughout the house, set the security system and ended the day by crawling into bed to read a book written by someone else, who obviously did not have the dreaded blinking cursor disease.

“Dreaded blinking cursor disease”–thanks for the smile! It can be really hard to write when we let ourselves get distracted by other things. Don’t feel bad because I do the exact same thing (except one of mine is playing video games instead of writing : ) ). Thanks for sharing. : )

So realistic, Cindy! Nice work. The only thing I would add is that the difference between Chloe and the author whose book she read that night is bed is that they did not let the dreaded blinking cursor disease stop them. They got something on the page…they were probably disappointed, but they rewrote and revised and edited until they came out with something of which they were proud.

Dreaded blinking cursor diseases is brilliant, btw.

Thank you so much Marcy. Being stubborn and writing does not go well together. The more I tell myself that I need to sit down and write, the more excuses I come up with. So funny how a little thing like rejection can knock you off of your path of well intentions. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to post your words of wisdom to us all!

Actually, I’m going to respectfully disagree with you here. Being stubborn and writing is VERY GOOD. In fact, it’s essential to survive. To stay persistent and believe in yourself…despite criticism, rejections, procrastination and all sorts of other sabotage from ourselves and others.

Good luck to you! Stay stubborn, but still write! 🙂

My head feels tired. Gonna take a nap. Wait, I was supposed to start writing? I’ll get to it later. I didn’t write that poem for the PAD today, or yesterday, opps I forgot it over the weekend too. So, it’s NaNoWriMo (Camp Summer), I forgot to write and post, falling behind again. Didn’t have time to do daily “data dump” today or yesterday? Did I read anything, oh, yeah, yesterday. I wrote yesterday, wait that was a to do list. Music helps me be creative. Yep really feeling this beat, and the next and the next. I forgot to write started singing and dancing. ADD ’cause my H left when I got old (no more ADHD). Did I feed the animals and collect the eggs? Is supper ready and homework done? I have to read for my assignment. My head feels tired. Gonna take a nap. Wait, I was supposed to start writing? I’ll get to it later, maybe. Was that 15 minutes? I lost count. Tomorrow’s a new day. ~ Stephanie

Nice! Tomorrow is a new day Stephanie! Love the line about ADD “my H left when I got old”!

Love the spontaneous-ness of this! We all have responsibilities and pressures that can keep us from writing as much as we’d like to. I encourage you to keep writing, whenever you can find time, even if it’s just a sentence a day! Thanks for sharing. : )

Eliza stood just outside the spongy blue and red ring, waiting to perform her bow staff kata (form) for the five judges. She didn’t even notice the female martial artist currently showing the judges her kata.

Instead she had chosen a spot on the tiled gym floor and stared at it, unmoving, just as her master had always instructed her to do at a karate tournament. Her gut tied itself into knots. She might make a mistake. She might let her master down.

For a moment she listened to the world around her. The martial artist in the ring shouted occasional battle cries with her technique. Someone in the crowded bleachers yelled encouragement.

Eliza’s heart hammered against her ribs. There were so many people. So many distractions that could break her focus during her kata. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead.

Something her master had told her several weeks ago sprang to her mind. The words would never leave Eliza. They were words her master had spoken just after Eliza had passed a difficult belt rank test–the final test before black belt.

“Whenever you get discouraged, don’t think about what you’re not,” her master had said, her seafoam blue eyes piercing Eliza. “Think about what you are.”

Again, Eliza shut the world out, lasering that spot on the floor.

The gymnasium erupted all at once as parents, siblings, and friends in the crowded bleachers cheered and clapped. The female martial artist who had just finished her kata bowed to the judges and stepped back, off of the blue and red mats.

One of the judges spoke. “Eliza Wooding.”

She looked up and ahead. Her body relaxed. Gripping the bow staff firmly at her side, she left her thoughts and feelings outside of the ring and marched forward to show the world what her karate was made of.

I’d love some feedback/comments on this. Thanks! : )

Love the line about about getting discouraged and remembering what you are. You did a great job making me feel the tension Eliza felt…the pressure she was under to perform and also bringing home the fact that she would be letting others down besides herself. You finished nicely by resolving the tension and getting the job done. Nice job.

Thank you, Cindy. I appreciate that. : )

TERRIFIC! I loved that you chose a different kind of arts — martial arts. You really took me into the moment. My favorite part of all was the quote from Eliza’s master, “”Whenever you get discouraged, don’t think about what you’re not. Think about what you are.”

Words to live by for us all! Thanks 709!

Aww, thank you Marcy! : )

Gotta get the laundry done. Oh wait, I still need to make the bed, feed the dogs, fix breakfast for the hubby, wash dishes, clean a room, take a shower and get dressed, oh no it’s lunchtime already?! Get that done, clean up, ok, now I can write. Oh, I need to check e-mail, what’s the weather like? Oh, I have notices from F/B, gotta check those out NOW. Oops, dinner time, what to make? Ok, dinner made, dishes clean, dogs fed, NOW I can write. Oh, my goodness, it’s 9 PM already? Ok, I can write now the dogs and hubby are in bed. I’m so tired, maybe I can squeeze in some time tomorrow to write…is it morning yet? Yes, this is my process for not writing. My bad.

Awww yes, Svford. Procrastination. Some of these are real. The laundry, the dogs, dinner, dishes…they all must be attended to. Facebook is one of my downfalls and a fun, but at times, wasteful time suck.

Thanks for showing it like it is. Marcy

A very nice piece of writing. This piece is also charming, and reminds me of something one might see in the comic strip Cathy. Overall, this is a great story. I know I can certainly relate to a busy schedule, what with helping my aunt taking care of my grandmother, who often keeps us up at night, due to her aches and pains, etc…even though we give her Tylenol to help with the pain. I often end up sleeping in later than I actually intended, because of exhaustion from being kept up by my elderly grandmother. I alternate between writing in the afternoon, and writing late in the evening. Sometimes, I feel alert enough to write during the morning hours, when I’m lucky enough to do so. However, most of the time lately, I don’t start my day until 12 p. m. or a little later. Then, during the early part of evening, my aunt likes to have me go out to run errands with herself and my grandmother, and also so my grandmother can get some fresh air. Believe me, when I say, I do understand where your character in the story is coming from. I’m sure we’ve all been in similar situations which takes us away from the things we most love to do.

Thanks, Kiki. 24 hours in a day sometimes just aren’t enough! I live for Tuesday and Thursday evenings when hubby is bowling and I can take my life and show it is funny, busy, and a quirk. Now if only I could find the time to flesh out some of these characters. Lol!

The Struggles A Writer Must Endure By Kiki Stamatiou a. k. a. Joanna Maharis

Dominica Moore sits at her computer staring at the screen, struggling to come up with a writing composition for a short story competition she wants so badly to enter. She’s only been sitting there for five minutes, when her Aunt Doris Feldman walks into the living room to ask for her help. “Dominica, I need you to come inside to help me transfer your grandmother from the bed to her wheelchair. I want to get her dressed so we can go out to run some errands.”

“Can’t you see I’m trying to write. I can’t get any writing done when you keep interrupting me all of the time. My writing is very important to me. It’s just as much of a profession as anything else. The problem is that you people don’t respect it as such,” Dominica retaliates as she gets up from the sofa, smacking her hand against the wall in disgust, on her way into her grandmother’s bedroom.

“Dominica, you don’t need to get huffy. It will only take five minutes of your time to help me transfer her,” Aunt Doris replied, while removing some things away so she and Dominica will be able to put Grandma Clara Feldman the wheelchair.

“You do this every time I’m trying to either write in my journal or when I’m trying to compose a composition onto my computer. This needs to stop. It’s not right the way you people have little to no respect for what I do,” Dominica shouts while pushing her grandmother in the wheel chair.

When she is finally able to sit down and write, Dominica is so stressed out. She decides to check her email messages to see if she has received a reply from a magazine she submitted one of her short stories to.

Upon checking her messages, she sees a reply from the magazine. Opening it up, she feels nothing but disappointment after reading it, because her short story has been rejected. It’s not what the magazine is looking for, although the editor does encourage her to feel free to submit some more work to their publication in the future.

However, Dominica plugs away. She searches her computer for some other stories she has written so she can submit them to other potential magazine publications. She can’t find any she is satisfied with, so she then researches other periodical publications to read up on the types of genres of stories they are looking for. None of her stories fit into those categories. She decides to brainstorm to come up with a character and theme to write about that would be better suited for the magazine she was rejected by.

After brainstorming, she decides to time herself for fifteen minutes, and write whatever comes into her mind. She figures by doing some writing exercise to get some story ideas flowing more smoothly. Although she is still disappointed about getting rejected by the magazine, she writes additional stories, and tries the periodical again.

© Copyright, Kiki Stamatiou, 2015

Thank you, Kiki. You wrote a BEAUTIFUL slice of real life. I love Dominica’s perseverance, despite lack of support from her family, rejections and other stressors. I need to be more like your character and appreciate you creating her for us.

Thank you so much, Marcy Mason McKay. I appreciate your kind words. I’m glad you liked the piece. When writing a given piece I try to do a mashup of elements taken from my life, the lives of others I know, and things going on in the media, to create unique personalities of the various characters I write about, and allow my readers to see life through the perspectives of my characters.

Just when my mind is blank for inspiration, I find a small notebook buried at the bottom of my purse. Inside are notes from a visit to a nursing home about five years ago. I had seen a gentleman who came to the dining room whistling as he pushed his walker. He whistled waiting for his lunch to come. The server stated with a smile, “He’s our entertainment for today.” He took a bite of lunch, then he whistled. Took another bite, then whistled. When he was finished, he whistled some more, then stood and whistled as he left the dining room. There was a smile on every face in the room. Just an every day scene in the nursing home, but surely worth a story of his own. Keep a notebook. You never know when it might create a story.

Lovely, Ruth and so true. Wonderful stories are happening all around us, but we must be aware enough to catch them and write the down before we lose the moment. Thanks for sharing.

She stared at the canvas. It stared back. This was now the fifth day running that they had had this standoff. She had had spells like this before, spells of feeling stuck, not knowing where to start, how to start. But this, this felt different. She felt empty, devoid of ideas, energy, creativity, and worst of all, passion. As each day came, hope was restored. Yesterday was just an off day. But after four consecutive days, she wondered how off she really was. She scanned the room, her eyes flitting from the yellow armchair in the nearest corner to the desk beside it, its surface smothered in papers, loosely and carelessly piled. She rose halfway from her stool before slowly sitting back down. Nope. No. Her eyes landed on the room’s sole plant, her Lucky Bamboo, perhaps it needed watering? It rarely needed watering. She continued scanning, evaluating, searching for something, anything, that demanded immediate attention, anything to get her off this stool, away from the merciless stare of this canvas. But with each invented task came her mother’s voice “running away won’t help. It never does. It is running towards it, towards that giant, brick wall in front of you, that will get you where you want to go, where you need to go.” She looked back to the canvas. Right. Let’s do this.

Twenty minutes later she was buttoning her coat, scarf and hat in hand. She glanced – so quickly that the sight barely registered – at the canvas, the wooden splinters of its broken frame sticking out of the trash can like crags into the sky.

WOW, Maya. There’s so many aspects I liked about your piece, but here are my 2 favs: 1) This was a STANDOFF. I’ve felt that way soooo many times with the blank page. It’s the perfect description for artists of all kind. 2) Her broken frame in the trash! I wasn’t expecting that. Well done!

Thanks so much, Marcy! This is my second ever share, and it’s wonderful to get some feedback! Thank you for inspiring me to write this morning, and to share. You are appreciated!

My pleasure, Maya. It’s what the TWP is all about — inspiration + participation!

Awesome read Maya. It’s super reminiscent of my own approach to this story. Nicely descriptive, I could feel myself in her shoes as she looked around. I would’ve tried to turn it up a notch and really get into the environment and her feeling. How was her heart beating, what’s the smell of the pain as it sat there, the canvas? Keep writing!!

I write a lot, but I also have times when I don’t write. I can usually relate these back to one or more triggers, for example getting bad feedback on my work, or reading dispiriting articles on how hard it is to get published, or realising my story idea has been done so many times before. Now I’m more aware of the triggers, I try to ignore them and push on through. 🙂 Thanks as always for your inspiration, Marcy.

Catherine – I SO admire your honesty and self-awareness. Good for you. Thanks for sharing. m3

“or realising my story idea has been done so many times before.”

Yeah, I have a hard time with that one too. One of my favorite story evaluating tools is the question “who cares?”. Often, I have a hard time when the answer to that question suggests that it’s been done a million times before. Coming up with a new twist that would engage readers is difficult. Perhaps, I should try concentrating on characterization, rather than a new plot twist, because they say good characters are what draw readers in?

The journey continues …

Stephen King’s “On Writing” was the most inspirational book I’ve ever read on writing.

In short, you write and get all your thoughts down on paper. It doesn’t matter if they are good or not, just race down the page ahead of your self-doubt and criticism, before they have time to catch up with you.

Don’t spend a lot of time rereading what you’ve already written because either A) You’ll think it’s the most brilliant thing anyone has ever written, which is dangerous thinking or B) You’ll think it’s absolutely terrible, horrible crap.

In both case A and B, you’re far too close to it. It’s far too personal for you to be objective about it.

Just move on, and keep writing, and remember that however awful it might be in it’s ‘finished’ form, it’s not actually finished until you revise it.

There’s a gem in there somewhere, but to mine out the gems, you have to fill the page with rocks first.

“On Writing” is a small handful of books that I keep visible from desk at all times. It’s one of those I read every few years and glean more wisdom from each time. I LOVE it.

Thanks for sharing these truths with us.

It was 4 am. She sat staring at a blank word document on her laptop. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.

It was just not happening. She had no idea how to begin the story that was struggling to come out of her. The story was there….it had been creeping into her head for months, for years in fact. But every time she sat down to write, nothing happened.

She stared around the room. Maybe there was something that would spark off a word, a sentence, an idea that would get her going. Her fingers hovered enthusiastically over the keyboard. Nothing.

Think positive, she thought. Picture yourself in blue, your fingers literally flying over the keyboard, churning out page after page of a riveting novel. Her fingers hovered eagerly over the keyboard. Nothing.

I’ve had the idea for my book bouncing around my head for nearly ten years now, yet even though I’ve blocked out most of the story I still struggle to write each scene. You captured everything I feel when I’m at a loss for words. Thank you!

Have you been staring into my head, Ayesha? I SWEAR I have done this at 4 am before. Bleh!

But, I’ve also kicked Fear’s ass and gotten words onto the page. It’s just a continual struggle and not a one-time battle. I really enjoyed this. Thanks.

He rolled the grey clay in a circle to perfect a globe in his work shop. Kneaded it to a sharpened pick against his worn wooden desk top. Connected the ends and made a near perfect circle, perfectly. He stared, he considered the softness of the grey clay. A warm breeze blew in through the propped open workshop door and made him turn to the day for a moment. He checked the air temperature. He sighed and rolled it back to ball between his hands feeling the clay slightly stick to the palms of his hands. He slapped it to pancake like a pizza pie, Folded it to a taco half moon and again to a pedaled cone. He sat, stared then went for a smoke outside.

He came back in then saw some trash and clutter before he could make it to his desk. He cleaned it up, with his grey clay drying in his peripheral. He drew attention to the old dingy white walls that needed to be re painted, he began to google the nearest paint store. He walked outside to his pale blue pick-up and hopped behind the wheel. He looked forward from the truck and saw a pile of old dry clay laying next to his garbage. He turned back to his workshop door and starred then turned the ignition key.

Fear won again. This was another one that hurt my heart to read, but that’s GOOD. You captured the subtle procrastination and fear that sabotaged this poor guy.

It’s okay. This happens to us all. I always enjoy your practices and appreciate your willingness to put yourself out there.

Thanks Marcy! I am happy you enjoy them. I was just thinking…Isn’t it interesting to write about a writers procrastination? To give it more attention than it already gets? Like counting time counter-clockwise?

Wow! I hadn’t thought it that way, but I LOVVVVVE the concept of “counting time counter-clockwise.” That is both profound and deep. Keep exploring that. m3

Marcy McKay, My cat Pooh loved your name. As do I. I am not writing because I am moving everything from my basement into my garage. A good way to deal with grief. I love your article. Yes, more doing. Less talking. xo Pamela

Sweet Pamela,

I haven’t stopped thinking of Pooh since I read Joe’s post of his death. I really did enjoy your cat’s posts. You’re were also a good and faithful typist. Your love for Pooh was BIG, so I imagine your grief will not be small. Be gentle with yourself.

Pooh would like the shortened version of my name: m3

“I, I don’t know where I am.”

James stared into the mirror at his reflection. He looked trim. He looked good. But not too good. That would be bad. James wasn’t going for the lead. Just below. He needed to be approachable, non-threatening.

“I, I don’t know WHO I am.”

His voice quivered. Boy, was he feeling it. The marooned sailor. Being questioned by the captain of a trading vessel. Years and years of being alone. What would society feel like to that man.

“I, I don’t want to come, get away, get AWAY.”

James looked away from the mirror, shielding his face with his hands. He felt it. He felt this sailor’s struggle. And he was enjoying it, the emoting. God, it felt good.

James placed a finger on his cheek. It was wet. A tear. Oh, wow, the audition tonight was going to go great!

“Eye, eye, where, who, when, what!?? HAhahahaa. James, you can be such a dramatic, you know?”

James felt his heart sink. Was the stutter too much? It wasn’t in the script. But it was there by intent, he felt. But the casting team might not agree. What if they thought it was stupid.

“You think it was too much, Gary?”

Gary was James’s roommate. A decent sort, always helped with dishes and trash and such.

“Oh, who am I to know, who am I to know? Bit much for me, I guess.”

But Gary was an attentive audience. He knew good performance. Oh, jeesh, what to do? They are going to hate me. And the audition was tonight. James couldn’t change his delivery now.

“Gary, do you want to order a pizza for us, tonight? While you pick it up, I could walk to the liquor store and grab some beers?”

Yes, this was better. Have a nice, normal evening. Rethink, find another role to audition for.

“Sure thing, James, sure thing.”

The sailor would have to stay marooned just a little longer.

Ouch. This hurt to read, Jacob. But, there are thousands of Jacobs doing that in one way or another through the various arts. Sorry, but I want to punch Gary in the face for sabotaging him. His treachery was subtle, too…”bit much for me…want pizza and beer instead?”

Your practice was amazing. Thanks for sharing.

I haven’t written yet. I think it’s because I had to get these silly first 51 years out of the way first. Well, I’ve done that, and I don’t mind telling you, it wasn’t easy.

I have always enjoyed reading, and my first real memory of wanting to become serious about writing was at a church bazaar when I was about 10 years old or thereabouts. Among the items they were auctioning was a copy of one of Sylvia Burack’s “Writer’s Handbook” series, for whatever year it was. I had about a dollar and a quarter, but it was just one little book among a million bits of flotsam; certainly a quarter would do the trick, my older sister assured me. So I moved the book to the area that would ensure it would come up for auction. Eons later, they finally noticed it and started taking bids. I bid my quarter. Now for some inexplicable reason, the local “church lady” – don’t we all have one? – took a liking to this one book that this little 10 year old kid wants, and she starts bidding against me. I quickly burned through my dollar and a quarter and still she kept on bidding. Before long, other people were chiding her to “let the little kid buy his book”, but we kept going, back and forth. Luckily my older sister subsidized my efforts, and eventually the old bag relented, and I got my first book on writing for the astronomical sum of 3 dollars. I still have that book to this day.

Somewhere in me is the ability to write. I saw the title of this article and, as I have with dozens of similar ones before, I dove into it, hoping it would hit the nerve that would finally help me flick that elusive “on” button, after which I would inevitably spew metric tons of spun gold from my pen, earning accolades, respect, and boatloads of money. Or at least make my 3 bucks back.

I think I have all of the tools. I have at least a passable command of the language. I am a member of Mensa so, you know, I can play the pomposity card at the drop of a hat. And many friends tell me (ok, many of my other personalities tell me) that I have an interesting take on life in general. Shouldn’t all of that at least add up to a freaking pamphlet or something?

A lot of what is said above applies to me for certain. In the great Venn diagram entitled “why writers don’t write”, I would imagine that the vast majority of reasons overlap the entire group; fear, time, a lack of personal entitlement, my crayon sharpener is clogged. You know, all of the cliches. For me, it almost feels like I’m waiting to be given permission or something. So I look at my voluminous library of books on writing – yes, that first book bred pretty profusely – and I wonder, “when will I scratch this itch?”. I hope it’s soon.

Thanks for listening to my rambling.

Doug I have to say that it was both warm and refreshing to read what you wrote. It takes courage to write on a personal level about yourself and share it out with the world so I commend you for that. And it had it subtle bouts of humor which I could always use first day in the morning…..hell, any part of the day so thank you. Watch your repetition of words in the second sentence of your start and please by all means WRITE ON!!

Doug, I have to say, that was a great piece! I have felt the same way, and still feel like I don’t know what to write, when to write, how to write. All I can say is jump in, and work it. I still feel nauseated when I submit my work, but what can you do? I have to write or I’ll go insane and take my husband along for the ride. So yes, it’s worth it to just get it started, edited, reworked, etc.

This is NOT rambling, Doug. Not by a long shot. It was honest and brave and gives others hope because it’s NEVER TOO LATE to write. Sometimes, we have to get those silly first X years out of the way.

Your passion for words ring through and hope you see those first 51 years would giving you wisdom and life experience. They were preparing you for now. I hope you’ll take advantage it.

I enjoyed reading this. That little story about the book? I’m certain that is publishable flash fiction, by somebody’s standards. There was a looming sense of humor that poked through at certain points.

His neck is sore, the hour is late. There are a hundred excuses running through his mind to make it okay not to write. But he has to write, he knows he has to. There’s never going to be a better time than now. It’s not always going to be easy, but since when was loving something easy? And writing is a love, even if it’s an exercise in narcism.

Let it flow, he thinks, just write the damn thing. He’s frustrated now. Why is it so easy some days, and yet on other days so hard? Whenever he gets a little better at crafting words, he gets worse at letting them out. But it’s okay. He knew it wouldn’t be easy.

Nothing easy is worth doing.

So now he’s getting into somewhat of a groove. Tucked under his blanket with a laptop propped on his lap. He’s not even paying attention to whether or not he is switching tenses. As long as he doesn’t head hop or swap point of view it will probably be okay. He doesn’t know much about being a writer, but he’s willing to learn. He just started university to do a bachelor of writing. The first thing they told him was:

“Writing is hard, why are you here?”

It wasn’t the nicest welcome, not quite what he was expecting. He knows writing is hard, dammit, that’s why he’s here. To learn how to get better, to learn how to make it easier. He wouldn’t of started the degree on a whim.

Though that seems to be exactly what he did. He was only writing for a month when he decided to uproot his life and start uni for it.

He takes a breath and tries to relax, remembering something. He’s supposed to be writing about writing, not writing stream of consciousness. It’s all a little bit too meta for him.

He looks at the time, four minutes thirty seconds left.

Four minutes twenty two, then he can stop writing.

Stop writing? But he doesn’t want to stop writing! What if he can’t get the words out, what if he can’t say what he wants to say? What if it’s not good enough and he shares his work. The other writers might look at it and laugh, pity him. What is he doing at university? He’s not made for school, he’s not made for writing.

Three minutes and six seconds.

The time’s still ticking, still running out. He’s thinking now he should try and make it to five hundred words but he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to.

Another sixty words left. Just another sixty left.

Two minutes twenty.

His neck is still sore. The writing is getting easier, but at the same time he feels as if he is running out of things to say…

There is so much in his mind that he wants to say, will anyone want to hear it? Is it worth putting the fingers to the keys to tap out a rhythm no one wants to hear?

One minute, two seconds.

He made the five hundred word mark. Actually, he beat it. He’s smiling now as he types, can’t be much longer now.

Thirty seconds.

Five hundred forty one words.

There isn’t much left for him to type. He’s trying to think of a funny quip, something to leave people wanting mor-

You nailed this, Todd. “Writing is hard, why are you here?” I’ve asked myself that question more than once. For me the answer is: I can’t not write. I know that’s poor grammar, but it’s how I always hear it in my head. Your practice rocked today. Thank you.

“Tap..tap…tap”. The sound echoed through the many halls. A deafening sound to most ears, but to his, sheer silence.

The sound went on as he gazed out into the nothingness forward. Well, he saw nothing, we would have seen 3 grand original condition, newly stained casement windows displaying the picturesque “American Dream”. A beautiful sight to most, yet he saw nothing.

Ne he wasn’t blind and now he wasn’t even deaf. He was lost and paralyzed. Sitting as newly inspired destined-to-be-writers do trying to figure out: “what do I write about?”, “what could I say that people would want to read?”, “why should anyone care?”.

He began to jot down ideas and as quickly as he did he scribbled them out and ripped the page from its book. Write…..scribble…..rip. Write……scribble…..rip. Write……scribble……rip. Until he sat there in a pile of his own lost ideas.

With the voices of his own fear building in his head like the subtle whispers just barely echoing in the wind, he got himself up from the pile and walked towards the windows. The middle one was always his favorite. As he opened the window and looked out at the many stories below he felt that immediate rush and that beat in his heart that signaled: “ here I am”. He finally knew what he wanted to write, what he was destined to write.

It’s a shame though that one one will have ever gotten a chance to read it.

Luis! This gave me chills. I thoroughly enjoyed it all, but this part blew me away, “Write…..scribble…..rip. Write……scribble…..rip. Write……scribble……rip. Until he sat there in a pile of his own lost ideas.” A pile of his own lost ideas. How sad, yet how true. Beautifully done.

Marcy, love this! That list of “not writing” kind of cracks me up, because we’ve all been there to some extent. Lately it’s the social media thing that’s killing me. I am trying to ease off, because like you say, if you don’t have something to promote, it’s not worth spending all your time making a platform, but it’s hard to step away. I will try, though, because I know I feel better about my (writing) self when I can keep my brain clear of all the clutter and put words into my novel.

Hi Dana, How do you think I came up with that snappy list of “not writing”? Sadly, I have lived it all. And, you’re so right — walking away from social media is so much easier said than done. It’s kind of addicting. My personality tends to be too ALL or NOTHING (shocker), so I’m just taking the social media thing a day at a time + a moment at a time. I have to really be intentional about it, but in just a little over a week’s time I feel better and less overwhelmed by social media. Good luck to you and your novel. Your effort to protect your word is SO WORTH IT!

Knowing basic chord structure (even what the notes are) is enough to write a song, yet his score sat blank in front of him on his laptop.

He had been expected to write something in seventh grade, but this was something different. The beautiful girl with the gorgeous voice and incredible talent had gotten inside every aspect of his head, and if music had gotten her into his heart, maybe it could work the other way around.

He put in a few notes and hit play. It didn’t sound like anything. He deleted them, trying again with a new arrangement. Half an hour later the page remained blank. How do I convince you that all I want is to get dinner with you, kiss you, undress you, all in a song I can’t write? His chest ached, his head hurt from staring at the screen so intently, yet none of that translated onto the score.

Ooooooo, nice, Kieran. A beautiful girl inspiring a love song he can’t write. I felt this guy’s pain. I hope he does it…eventually.

Add one more to the list: creating writing tools [spreadsheets, templates, etc.] is not writing. That’s my hangup; too much tool creation, not enough writing.

Oh, Christopher! I wish I could give you a shiny gold star. You are 100%, dead-on, right! All sorts of “organization + preparation” to write…still isn’t writing.

I’m adding it to my list. THANK YOU!

Thanks for the star; it’s really shiny! =)

This was it. This was the last one and then he could retire…then he would retire. It would be the end. Hed be done with this and hed be done with her. Finalmente. He felt old, as old as the tree this wood had come from, as old as Tree itself. Ancient forests had heard his cries and been watered by his tears. That’s how old he felt. But he was done, or nearly done. This was the last one, he repeated to himself silently, and then he’d end it all. Retire from making the cursed, beautiful things, retire from the torment and the heartbreak, the inspiration and the agony. And from the total defeat of separation he always felt when he finished. Guitarra. Even in his mind the word echoed bitterly, a dampened accusation of impotence. Every curve his hands had coaxed from the wood, each dip and rise of the cool, silky body, etched her name more deeply into his mind. Elena. He’d lost track of the guitarras he’d made over the years. Some were harried pieces made just in time to keep a cobwebbed roof over his stupid, ugly head. Others were divine creatures meant solely for the gods, bringing inspired cathedrals rising gracefully, gloriously over his enraptured, angelic brow. Demon or angel. He never knew which would come from the quiet material in his hands. Never knew until it was too late, until he hated his hands or loved his art. But always when he finished, the total defeat of separation. He hated Elena. He loved Elena. She was the mistress of his art. By her words or her silence was he gifted with genius or tormented by madness. He cursed the day his eyes had seen her and his hands had touched her cool, silky body. But he cursed her more now, now that she was gone and he had nothing to make of this piece of wood. He could not retire until he finished this one, but he could create neither the divine nor the cursed, without her.

OMG, this was fabulous! This was quiet, but said so much. There were so many parts I loved:

…a dampened accusation of impotence.

…He never knew which would come from the quiet material in his hands. Never knew until it was too late, until he hated his hands or loved his art.

He could not retire until he finished this one, but he could create neither the divine nor the cursed, without her.

Excellent work. Thank you!

I glared at the sign above my desk: The key to success as an author is to write something every day. “Oh shut up!”

The cat stared at me. His green eyes blinked and he twitched his ears disdainfully as I edged closer to my bed. “Don’t look at me like that cat, I’m thinking… okay, I’m thinking about thinking.”

Get up—have some coffee. Need to keep awake to write.

“Travis, stop purring. If I have to stay awake, so do you. Wake up… smell the coffee… pen… where’s my pen?”

Mmmm, this is so nice… don’t you just love the smell of fresh sheets? Don’t you love the…

Terrific, Anna. Sleep and the temptation of beloved pets. Obviously, you are a big animal lover since it’s your profile pic. I appreciate you doing the practice and enjoyed it. Good luck @ stealing more writing time!

The paintbrush stalled in his hand. He saw so clearly in his mind the skies, the mountains, and he knew what the scene should be. But that very knowledge made him freeze. He knew it had to be beautiful; not being able to create that held him back. It felt like he would be insulting God and everyone who believed and supported him if he didn’t get it right. It was important that the picture be correct, and he didn’t know how to make it so. He tried to reason with himself, but just the idea of wanting it to be so good made him so afraid. So Afraid.

And so he paused with the paintbrush in mid-air. He knew the rhetoric. “Just start.” “You can’t be an artist if you don’t paint something.” “Standing there isn’t doing anyone any good.” “You don’t have to be perfect.” And yet, he was still frozen. The empty canvas in front of him stood daring him, threatening him, overwhelmingly perfect in its sheer blankness. He stood there trying to analyze how to start. The sky? The plain? A base color to begin? Finally he turned in defeat and put down the brush. Depressed and frustrated with himself he sat down with a sigh and put his head in his hands.

“I’ll never be able to do this.” He muttered to himself, hopelessly. “I give up.”

Christi, this is eerily something that just happened to me. I’ve been wanting to paint something from my mind’s eye that I experienced when visiting the home of Georgia O’Keeffe in Abiqui, New Mexico. I stood with the other tourists upon a breezy precipice behind her home overlooking a patchwork of farm land, cottonwood trees and copper red ragged cliffs that she would see every morning as she sat with her cup of tea. I struggled to paint what I remembered in my mind’s eye, but never quite captured it. I think I’ll just keep it a glorious, visual memory and drum it up the next time I have to “go to my happy place.”

Christi, you absolutely nailed this. “What if it’s bad?” “What if I can’t turn the vision in my head into a tangible thing that conveys EXACTLY what I felt when I felt it?”.

One of the things I tell myself over and over and over, because my internal critic is Godzilla, is “you have to allow yourself to be bad before you can be good.” The words make perfect sense to your mind. Your heart often can’t hear them. And your inner critic simply won’t allow it. Show that guy (or girl) the door. Fill a wastebasket with junk!!!! After a time, the swiss cheese becomes more cheese and less holes. Maybe there are a few gifted people out there whose prose sprung into existence fully formed and music to the ears of any reader. For the other 99.99999 percent of us, it’s “apply butt to seat and write”, over and over, that gets us there. That critic, trained up a bit, is your best friend when it comes time to edit, to be ruthless towards that little turn of phrase that you absolutely love but doesn’t fit the piece, all of that. But not as the idea is being born.

Paint that sky purple!!! Make the mountains out of cotton candy! Somewhere, three or four canvases down the road, is your masterpiece.

I can honestly say that I do two of the things in your “How to Steal Time’ list. LOL.: carrying a notebook and, when I’m in Writing Mode, writing during my lunch and 15 min breaks. I’ve learned to love 1 hr lunches because I would get so much done. Weekends is a little harder because it’s just me and the hubby and he can be a distraction. I may try the ‘writing late at night” option, though, because he goes to bed earlier than I do and I AM night owl. I stay up late reading when I could be writing….

Congrats on stealing time so well, Evolet. I love my hubs, but can sooo relate to spouses being a distraction. Reading is important, too. Maybe you can write part of the time after he goes to bed, then read. Just keep working at different things to eek out 5 minutes here and there. Good luck to you!

I don’t know how important writing is to me. I don’t do enough of it. I think that I think it’s important to me ’cause I keep doing it, but I’m really not sure. Oh, I write blurbs here and there, responses to blogs round-about blog land. Then I anxiously re-read my responses to make sure I don’t sound like a complete idiot. Afterwards I go back to the website time and time again to see if I got a reply to my response. Always looking for acceptance, any kind of acceptance.

I rarely respond to blogs where the author does not make a habit of commenting back to their readers. I read a few such blogs -because I enjoy them – but almost never reply if the author doesn’t respond. My ego is too fragile, if they don’t reply then I don’t think the handful of words that I spewed out were worth their time to read.

So I struggle.

I don’t make a habit of journaling because I rarely take the time to re-read what I wrote. Maybe I don’t even think the few words I spew out in a “journal” entry are worth MY time to read. If that’s the case, why the hell bother at all? Why would I expect others to read my dribble if I don’t read my own damned dribble? Worse yet, when I do go back and read some of the stuff I wrote, I realize that it all sounds the same, that I haven’t changed all that much. Haven’t improved in my writing … or my life. Another sucker punch to my frail ego.

But … for some blasted reason I still do it. Attempt to write something worth reading.

Is this droodle worth reading? I don’t know but here it is. Here it is in all it’s whiney glory.

One nice thing about the internet? If you hit the “post” or “submit” button, you are getting “published” (all-be-it in the loosest possible definition of the word). And that does something for the poor, wretched and frail ego of all us writer want-to-bees, or maybe I should say whine-a-bees. I suppose I shouldn’t be so presumptuous as to include the rest of you folks in that “want-to-be, whine-a-bee” comment. Maybe it’s just me.

So this is my excuse-du-jour for not writing.

… The jury is still out on whether it was worth writing …

… … Please submit your comments below, but don’t be too hard on me, my bruised ego already hurts and I don’t feel like climbing back under that rock from which I just emerged to “pen” these few words … …

… … … On the plus side though – I Wrote something … … …

Consider your ego stroked. I love this. Certainly hits a chord with me, who is fairly new to creative writing, and by that I mean trying to write thoughtful responses to blogs (mostly here on TWP) with as much rich vocabulary and phrasing as I can muster for that day. I, too, read and re-read my posts or parts of my sporadic journal, sometimes with a cringe if I think it’s not so good, or with perhaps inflated pride if my words spark my imagination.

Checking and re-checking for responses? I know the statistics of hits on a website sky-rockets for posts that I’ve made a comment on.

If you want genuine support, you’ve come to the right place. While there may not always be a response to your post, here you can surely imagine correctly that your writing is being well-received anywhere on the scale of imperfection to ready to publish. I learn so much from reading others’ entries, and from others’ insecurities when they are already oh so far ahead of me in experience and talent. The advice given on this and the contributors’ excellent websites surely indicates that we’re not alone in doubting the worth of our writing. Nevertheless, the message comes through loud and clear … “set your fear free” and release your words to the world. I’ll say I’m proud of you for doing that here today!! Know that you’re in good company and let that colorful swirl of writing essence deep within you float through your cells, swirl the ideas hidden in your mind, and flow through your fingertips. If you haven’t already, continue checking past posts for inspiration and validation that your writing is most definitely worthwhile.

In your piece, AMONG OTHER PARTS, I like:

“Dear Me,”;

‘responses to blogs round-about blog land”;

“Then I anxiously re-read my responses to make sure I don’t sound like a complete idiot. Afterwards I go back to the website time and time again to see if I got a reply to my response. Always looking for acceptance, any kind of acceptance.”;

“the handful of words that I spewed out”;

“I realize that it all sounds the same, that I haven’t changed all that much. Haven’t improved in my writing … or my life”

Oh… I do see some of your other writing, including your piece about editing on the “11 Writing Tips…” post. Great stuff.

Carla got up from her computer with a glance through the open window. The sunshine streaming in was all the incentive she needed to get out onto the perfectly-cut green lawn of her suburban home and kick her shoes off. The grass felt moist and supple beneath her toes, and she spread her arms wide to soak in the sunlight, a gently breeze blowing her hair. It seemed like a perfect day for dancing! Carla stretched out a leg, skipping lithely across the lawn. Her long wispy dress wrapped around her ankles as she spun and pirouetted, her long auburn hair covering her eyes, but not her smile, and her eyes danced along with her slender body. She crouched low as she ran and jumped high, legs spread in a ballet dancer’s pose, transitioning smoothly as she landed into a cartwheel spin. The bird chirped at her from the trees as she flew across the grass, pushing her to whirl and leap faster and faster, body swirling to her own mental beat. The sound of feet stomping and clapping hands, high and low voices chanting and laughing, a veritable crowd of onlookers cheered in her mind, even as she whirled and spun faster and faster. Like at a Russian wedding the chanting sped up with each beat, the girl’s hair whipping across her face, catching in her moist, supple lips, her eyes alive, more alive than she would ever see for herself. The crescendo in her ears grew to a deafening roar, and with a huge leap, she flipped head over heels to land in a gracious bow, panting, before the tall pines and cedars that held her chirping audience. Carla flung her head back to get the hair out of her eyes and held her face up to the sun as she caught her breath. She hadn’t danced like that in ages, years it seemed! In fact, she had never danced like that. Carla couldn’t even remember the last time she had run and jumped. Had she ever been able to move so quickly, so effortlessly? With a start, Carla looked away from the window, a message box appearing on her computer screen. An update message. She looked down at her wrinkled hands, curled around the plastic keys before her. Had she ever done a cartwheel in her life? It seemed like the past decade had been nothing but a series of excersizes in standing and sitting, with far too few breaks in between. She hit the glowing green button on the computer screen. With a buzz, it turned off, leaving her staring at the aged reflection on the black screen. Her withered hair hung listlessly around her face, the bags under her eyes drooping sadly. Could she ever dance like that, or was it just her imagination. With a creaking of bones, she pushed hard on her armrests and shambled to her feet. Her back pained her, but she shuffled to the door, opening it to the complaints of her old joints. The sunshine streamed in on her face, the breeze shook out the dust from her hair, Carla closed her eyes and straightened her back. She stretched out a leg, skipping woodenly out across the lawn…

Why do they call it writer’s block anyway? he silently quipped to himself. Like there’s a flow that’s being blocked… A barrier on a path, traffic in the road, a dam blocking a river. Writing’s not at all like that… No, there are no roads and flows in writing. His thoughts paused for effect. No – writing is being a lost wanderer in an infinite forest. View obscured by dense foliage. An abundance of shade surrounds you. You have no compass, nor any muse to light the way. You are alone with only your helplessness as guide. A subtle pride cunningly mused into his mind as these thoughts formed and became articulated within, a arrogance misplaced in his identity as a writer. We writers…

LOVE this! Each line presents an iridescent bubble, released to meander in my mind. Hard to choose which of your statements to comment on; they flow so beautifully … Wait, they don’t flow, they wander beautifully, sharing captivating ideas. I do have to give an extra shout out to this line, though. “His thoughts paused for effect” — clever; brings forth a grin.

Thanks for creating and sharing.

A very interesting point of view. Thanks for taking the time to share this piece. You’re right. The “shape” of writing is probably almost like a fingerprint, as unique to the writer as it is the piece. It’s one of the scariest parts of writing as you’re doing it, and one of the most rewarding once you’ve found your way through it. It’s like a completely darkened room, with objects that cannot be anticipated when you enter, and an opposite side that is of indeterminate distance from the entry point. We must shine our feeble light, a little at a time, exposing the form, inch by agonizing inch, until the entire room is illuminated by our industry and our creativity.

My only caution is, don’t go in barefooted because the legos will most certainly find you.

Thank you for this article, Marcy! It describes me to a T. Like Doug, I’ve had these first 56 years to tell myself to write! I just haven’t listened-yet. I still recall the time when I was a freshman in high school and, wanting to be like my English teacher who wrote short stories, conjured up a silly one to show her. The teacher read it (it REALLY wasn’t any good at ALL) and told me to keep trying and I would get there. I took her lack of “Wow, you are a natural born writer, Sheilah!” as “Give it up and try something else.” But I never stopped dreaming. I’ve attended a few writers groups and told myself I can do it, but that elusive yet very loud inside critic shouts quietly enough to keep me from putting pen to paper. Like the symptoms described in your article, I dream of writing and make excuses not to do it. This is the first article I’ve read that has inspired me because a writer has taken time to write about people like me and, I guess, a writer (hopefully, me!) has taken time to read it and listen to what it has to say. Thank you again.

Twitter, it’s always twitter. I have found that my most productive days are when I get up early (5.30). I hit the shower grab a coffee and then straight to my desk. But the trick is not to check e-mail, or open any social media. Instead I start up a site blocker for a three hour block and get to it. I’ve found that if I keep the social media door firmly shut I get loads done, instead of 3 hours worth of pressing F5 and wondering why no-ones up yet. Great post!

Anger’s cruel hands curled around her throat and choked out a sob. Emilie’s eyes burned with tears threatening to spill down her face. She crushed the schedule in her hand, and stared at the stage. It gaped at her, daring her to fill it with the wonder that was due in less than an hour.

This theatre was the best in the whole country, and Emilie was the one who had made it so. For years, she had orchestrated all sorts of magic shows. They had been filled with light, music, dancing, colors. You name it.

And now… the royal family was going to attend this show. This show, for which she could not even visualize one movement. Out of all the shows that they could have chosen, it had to be this one.

Emilie walked into the audience area, and closed her eyes. She poised her inner ear, scoured the depths of her mind to draw out something she could hope to get performed. Her mind remained as blank as the empty stage. She heaved in a shuddering breath.

Forty-three minutes until the people would arrive. Forty-three minutes until shame and humiliation engulfed her. Forty-three minutes until she lost her job for good.

Why had she stalled and procrastinated until the last minute? She rubbed her temples, and collapsed into the nearest chair. The tears that had been shoved away now showed no regard for pride. Despite her best efforts, they raced down her face, taking any hope for the future with them.

How should she start? God knows she had a lifetime of pain and turmoil that she could twist into something beautiful if she only tried. Some beautiful little words or a portrait that could make others like her smile and nod in agreement saying, “Me, too.”

She had a way of taking some of the most painful moments in her life and finding something funny in them. There had never been a situation in her life in which humor didn’t comfort her. She’d been told when she was young to smile because when you were smiling people would wonder what you were up to.

A mischievous grin washed across her face as she let her subconscious take over, regaling people who were interested in tales of her colorful childhood. She told anyone who would listen about how her art was a second home to her…her escape…her safe place. There were times she didn’t have a home…or a place to run to…or even a simple comfort in life. But even then she could always rely on her creativity.

She had always been torn, with an inner-critic and an inner-optimistic superhero always at odds. Her head and her heart. Her head had the screeching nagging voice of Delores Umbridge from Harry Potter . The English accent was constantly berating her like a token British judge on every reality TV show in existence. Yet, her heart, strong and Australian for no reason other than insanity, was constantly calling her head a wanker and telling it to shut up. She had constant arguments within herself.

“Just give up. You have adult responsibilities and an adult life, and you must let go of childish hopes and dreams.” Her head would snap at her. “But…but…butterflies and rainbows and kittens…” Her heart would argue nonsensically. “You’re a bloody idiot. You’ll never make it through the world being you.” Her head tossed a hurdle at her heart. Not the least bit intimidated, her heart does some yoga stretches, takes a running leap, clears the hurdle, and smugly looks at her head. She grins to herself and nods in satisfaction, “Suck it, me.”

Her imagination had taken her places the real world never could have. It was always been there for her. But how could she put all of that into terms her fellow artists could understand? All she could do was bleed on to the paper, share her soul, and hope for the best.

And there it was. There was her autobiography. Now all she had to do was write a book.

I just started writing this year, but I have been a writer for as long as I can remember. This article was meaningful to me because it validated the habits I have been forming, and it reinforced things that I instinctively know, but needed to hear from someone else.

I was not writing, because I could not find my voice. I had no confidence and gave myself little credit for who I was and what I could do, so it’s no wonder I couldn’t write. I knew without finding my voice, I would never skillfully express my vision through writing. I finally started giving myself some credit, and being less self-critical. I honed by communication skills by writing tons of work emails and I built up my confidence by being as social as I could stand and going out and making friends. I reconnected with my siblings one on one. Learning about them brought me a better understanding of myself, and my place in the family.

With confidence and well-practiced written communication skills, I was better able to give a voice to my vision.

If you have a vision that is worth sharing, and you have the voice to express it, you will find it becomes a passion. The passion becomes drive to find any and all time to do that thing (write).

I have been sitting at my keyboard for over an hour NOT writing anything, but thinking about my story and reading what I’ve written, my fingers resting but ready on the home keys. Then I googled “sometime not writing is writing” and I got to this article.

Once you have the drive, you will write and then you will gain momentum. When you gain momentum, you have to keep it going however you can. Don’t mind the bumps in the road, don’t lose the momentum. Finally, the story comes to life, because you realize it has a life of it’s own and all you can do is put it into the world and hope for the best.

Thanks for this article!

Grrr. I wanted to get the guide, but in spite of entering three different, but perfectly valid email addresses, your box won’t accept them. [email protected]

I don’t know where I read this but FWIW: did you ever meet a carpenter who was a afraid to build a chair?? A chef who won’t turn on the stove? just start writing.

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Are You Struggling to Be Creative? This Might Be Why

Naturally, as a storyteller and story theorist, this language appeals to me. It made me think about how my thirties are the opportunity not just for a deepening of my story, but for a new beginning of sorts. I quite like the idea of thinking of myself not  as a thirty-three-year-old who is supposed to (and doesn’t) have it all together, but rather as if this were my second time to be an innocent, expectant, wonder-filled three-year-old—who just happens to have thirty years of experience and knowledge. (To expand the analogy, this means my mom is experiencing her third time being a six-year-old—but with sixty years of experience and knowledge behind her.)

I particularly like this right now as I find myself, rather painfully, stripping myself back to basics. As I examine the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical load I’ve been adding to for the last thirty years—some of it good, some not-so-good—I find myself longing to return to my three-year-old self’s easy trust in the sheer magic of life . As a professional creative, I not only want this, I need it.

One of my all-time favorite quotes is Neil Gaiman’s disarming response to someone who asked, “I want to be an author when I grow up. Am I insane?” He replied:

Yes. Growing up is highly overrated. Just be an author.

The older I get, the more I agree. Mostly, this is because the more and more grown-up I get, the less and less I see life’s magic and the smaller and smaller my window of creativity becomes. I know I’m not alone in this, even (especially?) among writers.

As I’ve hinted before, the last few years have turned out to be a crucible of sorts for me. Although there were contributing reasons and events, I now see them more as just an inevitable, if dramatic, conclusion to the growing-up pains of my twenties. After an unexpectedly stressful move a year ago, these growing pains bottomed out with me feeling more disconnected from my creativity than ever before .

During the last few years, I kept plodding faithfully, finishing one book and starting another. But during this time, I was also largely in denial of my growing panic. I had been creative my entire life. I had been a storyteller my entire life. I had felt life’s magic always. And now, increasingly, for years, that magic was becoming only a bare flicker in my soul.

Was my creativity leaving me? Was my writing meant only to be a short chapter in my life? And if I wasn’t meant to soar on the wings of my creativity anymore, then God help me, because what could ever replace that?

As of this month, I now believe this crucible of what has been a dark night of my soul has finally begun to reach its Climax. Perhaps the best and most encouraging insight I have uncovered from a larger host of insights glittering up at me is a realization about why my creativity seemed to desert me—and, even better, what I can do to reclaim this most precious part of myself.

If You’re Struggling to Be Creative, Ask Yourself  “Where Is Your Energy Going?”

Creation is a deeply energetic act. As we’ve covered in discussions of whole-life art , being an artist or an author isn’t so different from being an athlete. Both require not just talent and dedication, but the cultivation of holistic health so that we will be able to bring optimum focus and energy to the act of creation.

As finite beings, we each possess a finite amount of energy. Every day dawns with the same possibility for productivity, but each day also dawns with a limited (if renewable) supply of energy. Our ability to turn that energy into creativity requires we wisely husband it, allot it, and utilize it. Energy spent on one area of our lives—be it hanging out with a loved one or worrying about finances—is energy that cannot be spent on creating.

Because creativity is an output of energy, it necessarily requires an input. The well can be filled by feeding all parts of ourselves a healthy diet— books and art for our minds and imaginations , proper diet and exercise for our bodies, satisfying relationships and fulfilling work for our emotions. Whenever we find ourselves struggling to be creative, we rightfully turn first to checking that our energy inputs are flowing properly.

But sometimes this isn’t enough. Sometimes you can be doing everything right to fill yourself up with good energy on every level—and still you find yourself struggling to be creative. This is incredibly frustrating. What else could there possibly be left to do?

That was the question I was asking myself. For a long time, the only answer I could see was “wait.” Wait and surely something will change. But if things were changing, they didn’t seem to be changing for the better. If anything, I felt my window of creativity getting smaller.

The Complete Enneagram (affiliate link)

But then, just recently, I had a breakthrough. For years, I’ve been interested in depth psychology, including the idea of the “shadow” (the theory that aspects of the self are unhealthily repressed into the unconscious). In reading Beatrice Chestnut’s excellent book The Complete Enneagram , her description of the shadow as simply the place where we put the things (emotions, desires, pains, fears) we do not want to look at clicked for me. She wrote:

The Shadow represents everything we refuse to acknowledge about ourselves that nonetheless impacts the way we behave.

As I started examining afresh what it might be that I did not want to acknowledge, I was astounded to realize not just the sheer load of stuff I started digging up, but also how much energy I have been putting into resisting  looking at these things.

That’s when it clicked. The reason my level of creativity had plummeted in the last few years was not that I was becoming “less creative,” but rather that more and more of my daily allotment of energy was being used to wall off more and more of the things I found too painful or overwhelming to face.

Creativity is an energy that wells up from our very life force. It is an energy of flow. It is an energy of opening ourselves to our own vulnerability and emotions—even our own pain sometimes. By its very nature, it is antithetical to the energy of resistance and repression.

What Are You Resisting?

Creativity is limited along a spectrum. The limitation might be as small as a block over an important confrontation between characters. Or it might be all-encompassing enough to induce the panic that maybe your writing days are ending.

Regardless, I now believe your first reaction should be to slow down, take a deep breath, and ask yourself, “Okay, what am I resisting?”

The answer might be a simple, “ I’m afraid I’m not good enough to write this scene” or “I’m afraid of the painful memories this scene is going to stir up for me” or “I’m afraid of opening my emotions to the extent required to honestly portray this scene .”

But the answer might also be much bigger. For each of us, time inevitably encroaches upon the wide-open, unwounded innocence of the three-year-old. Some of us, as Gaiman suggests, are lucky enough to maintain creative outlets into our grown-up years. But even for us, the more we grow up, the more energy we end up devoting to all the stuff we’re silently and often obliviously refusing to acknowledge.

Sometimes the things we’re resisting are  not hidden within us. Sometimes we’re dealing with real-life stresses— the same kind of outer-world obstacles we’re always throwing at our characters . Real-life jobs, relationships, and health challenges can steal our energy just as surely as can our own inner conflicts.

Creating Character Arcs (Amazon affiliate link)

But for my money, it’s the inner conflict that is most insidious (not least because it usually rides the tail of any and all outer conflicts). Just as we demand of our characters, if we’re going to overcome the lies holding us back, we must be willing to face those lies . In my experience so far, it’s the facing itself that is the hardest part. Just zoning in enough to notice our white-knuckled grip on an unacknowledged pain or unfulfilled desire is often enough to release us from some of our unspoken fears.

With this release comes a slight opening in the wall we’ve created inside ourselves. A little of our lost energy returns to us. A little light shines through. A little fresh air starts its flow. And with that flow comes the first whiff of a familiar breath—creativity.

4 Faces of Creativity (or, You May Still Be More Creative Than You Think You Are)

As I begin walking myself back into what I hope will be a complete restoration of my creative energy, I find myself realizing that perhaps I haven’t spent these last few years in as much of a creative desert as I thought. No, my creativity wasn’t flowing to the same degree or flowing into the same vessels. But I never stopped moving. I kept husbanding whatever creative energy I had and using it as responsibly as I could under the circumstances.

In recognizing this, I also see that the return of my creativity may not mean an immediate deep dive into writing for hours on end every day. First, it may require that I use my creativity more… creatively.

If you too find yourself on the return journey after struggling to be creative, it’s important to realize you are even now probably employing your creativity in many vital ways. Creativity in life isn’t just about creating art. It’s shows up in other parts of life—all of which are equally important to actually getting yourself back into writing shape.

For example, you will need your creative energy for:

I recognize I am currently in a chapter of healing. Even though part of myself is impatient to really and truly get back to the writing and the creative life as I used to know it, I can sense my energy isn’t there yet. Right now, my returning trickle of creativity is best used to encourage the spiritual, emotional, mental, and even physical healing I need in order to return to the page in top form. After years of walking a path of mental resistance, I need time to sit with myself and remember how to be friends with the deepest parts of my imagination.

2. Growth/Education

Throughout these difficult years, I have never stopped reading or actively learning. Even when I could barely get myself to sit at the computer, I could at least still read a novel or a book on Jungian archetypes or a writing guide. Sometimes the reading came hard too . But I maintained enough discipline to keep at it, and as long as new information kept coming in, I always found the trickle of creative energy necessary to be interested in it, to think about it, to absorb it, and—eventually—make use of it.

3. Faithfulness in Projects

Early last year, someone asked me how to keep writing when it was tough . It was a pertinent question for me at the time. I only remember part of my answer, but it has stuck with me as a sort of personal challenge throughout the hard times. What I told him was that there were many days when I didn’t want to show up and write. There were many days when I wanted to just give up and take a break until life was clearer and my creativity returned in force. But when I looked into the future, the one thing I was sure of was that I would be much happier to have a completed novel under my belt rather than nothing.

And I am. During the period of my creative doubt, I wrote a massive novel and half of a massive outline for its sequel. I didn’t feel creative during that period. Clearly though, my sheer faithfulness in chipping away at my projects a little every day proved I was much more creative than I knew.

4. Excitement and Passion

The best kind of creativity is the kind that whirls you into that ecstasy of excitement . When you’re so passionate about what you’re writing that you can’t think about anything else, it’s the best high in the world. Life is filled with meaning and purpose, love and joy, satisfaction and anticipation. Even the comparatively hard days when you’re sure what you’ve written is terrible, there’s still that urgent sense of life itself buzzing through your body.

It’s awesome, in every sense. It’s the reason we create. I daresay it’s even the reason we live.

I look forward with a true and homesick longing for that creativity which I have not felt in so long now. In gaining a better understanding of why it seemed to have drifted so far away from me, I have total faith it will return to me and I to it. But in the meantime, I also see that my creativity is still there, manifesting in all the ways necessary to recreate a foundation solid and healthy enough to sustain future surges of excitement and energy.

Writers always joke that the writing life is hard . Sometimes it’s hard in ways that we, in the innocence of our First Act, didn’t always expect it would be. But life goes on. Energy is renewable. Our stories have more than just one act, and with patience and discipline, we all get second chances. If you find yourself in a period of creative doubt or difficulty, know at least that you aren’t alone. If you happen to be walking in this tunnel with me, it may be that I am now a few steps ahead of you on the path, and from here I can tell you the view shows me there is a light at the end. Keep writing, friends.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Have you ever found yourself struggling to be creative? What helped you? Tell me in the comments!

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K.M. Weiland is the award-winning and internationally-published author of the acclaimed writing guides Outlining Your Novel , Structuring Your Novel , and Creating Character Arcs . A native of western Nebraska, she writes historical and fantasy novels and mentors authors on her award-winning website Helping Writers Become Authors.

Thank you for this! I’m currently going through a period where feeling creative is difficult. It’s reassuring to know someone else can talk about it. 💕

It can be a confusing thing. I went through a litany of things I named as “the problem,” before finally realizing what was going on.

Along these lines, I find creativity has different seasons throughout one’s life. I have always been a creative and highly imaginative person, as well as a lover of stories. But I never wrote, other than the letters I regularly sent to my mother in law detailing the escapades of her thoroughly wild grandchildren.

She was a librarian and great lover of reading. She said I should write more. And I sometimes rue the fact that I didn’t take her advice then.

It was later, when those wild children were grown, that I discovered the pleasure of writing, and of learning to write.

Thank you for your always informative blog posts.

Woman in early years of her Third Act (and still not quite grown up)

Lynda, thanks for sharing that. I feel that the “seasons of life” are part of what I’m learning about right now. This Second Act has brought, for me, a new season. That in itself is an adjustment (especially for someone who doesn’t like change!), but I’m starting to see how the new season has the opportunity to be just as exciting, maybe more so, as the last.

How are your blog posts always so timely and relevant to precisely what I am struggling with? Are you me from the future?? But all joking aside, this explains SO much. I’m about halfway through a complete re-write of my WIP and things have been going SO well and so much better and clearer than the first draft. And then for the last two weeks or so, the flow has just…turned to sludge. And it hasn’t felt like writer’s block, the ideas are there and I still love them and my outline is still exciting and I still feel the drive to share my words but those feelings have somehow seemed separate from me. Remote. Now I know that it’s because of my shadow. I was afraid of it when I was little…it wouldn’t leave me alone. Now that I’m in another “little” phase, it only makes sense for the antagonist of my childhood to reappear in another form.

“Me from the future.” That actually sounds like a great story idea. 😀

Thanks. I needed this today.

Glad it was helpful. 🙂

Trying to turn an inner-plot outline into something with an outer plot – and just making up scenes for the inner stuff to come out, is like wading through a swamp in a snowstorm.

Hah. Well said!

Thank you for this, K.M. The mountain ranges feel endless these days. Thanks for the reminder to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I long to experience that high of creativity again. Hopefully with more physical, mental and emotional healing I’ll be able to dip my toes in that pool, maybe enjoy a nice long swim!

Let’s make a date for that swim. 😉

Good post, Katie. Regarding this:

Regardless, I now believe your first reaction should be to slow down, take a deep breath, and ask yourself, “Okay, what am I resisting?”

I recommend meditation. It’s a good way to slow down, take several deep breaths, and see what wells up.

I agree. I started doing yoga this summer, for physical reasons, but I’ve found it immensely helpful for grounding my thoughts, emotions, and energy as well. Plus, I love it!

Your comments are relevant, but I am 72 years old, with a progressive illness…The creativity is frequently hard to find…

Very sorry to hear about your illness. But you’re here. You’re reading about writing. That’s not nothing. 🙂

I liked the idea of a life in three acts. As someone in Act III, the idea that I’m a six year old is a fun (and creative) thought. Since, having done it in my teens and early twenties and given it up, creative writing is something I have returned to, I do feel I have a creativity problem. But it is somewhat different to suffering life’s slings and arrows as seems to be happening to you (and you have my deepest sympathy on this–it’s deeply troubling to be in the “darkest valley”).

My problem is the simple challenge of coming up with “new” stuff–or variations on existing “stuff”–that cuts it in terms of the kind of standards I set myself.

Given you managed to write a book and a half, and it sounds as if this is not a slim novella, is the creativity there but not being recognised as such as the issues in your life you lay out dominate at the exclusion of what you like doing? That is, most of your life has been chores rather than pleasures in the last year or so? That will most certainly not help creativity.

Thanks for sharing what is, as one of the readers, I can only describe as a very personal post. That must have taken a lot of courage. It tells me, you are healing if you can go public, as it were.

Thanks, Peter. Much of what I’ve been realizing since writing this post last week is that I’m in a period of readjusting my viewpoint to see how life is different in this Second Act. Learning to stop projecting my expectations that how things were is how they should be again is helping me come back into sync with reality. Something I’m focusing on at the moment is the realization that trying to believe things (however well-intentioned) about life that are not in sync with reality is madness. There is a lot of peace just in admitting and accepting that things are as they are, instead of striving against them. What I’m discovering for myself is that most of these misconceptions and the striving to maintain them happen on a subconscious level. It requires some diligent digging to figure out why the old programs are no longer serving me.

Thank you for this post! This is exactly what I needed today. I’m going to remember to ask the question, “What am I resisting?” It’s funny, in my own work, I often make analogies to engineering and energy management (based on my professional background), but I realize now that I wasn’t always paying attention to how much energy was involved in my resistance at times…such a huge takeaway!

Yes, something else my mom and I discussed recently is how “wise” our own words have been in the past. If only we were also wise enough to always apply our own advice. 😉

I will keep you in my daily prayers, Katie, for full healing from what is draining your energy. We have all been through life events that have scarred us in some way.

When in my early twenties, I faced a life threatening situation. A wonderful counselor gave me tools to cope and coupled with a growing faith, they have helped me through many other serious circumstances.

Thank you for posting a such a brave testimony. Even though am not in a similar situation at the moment, it is a good reminder to keep watch and handle things as they come rather than stuff them away.

Thanks, Cecilia. I appreciate that. 🙂 In the week since writing this post, I feel like a lot of things are falling into place and a lot of healing is taking place for me. I don’t feel that the hard work is yet over, but it’s an exciting place to be in.

Thank you so much for this! I’m in the midst of a project myself, and had attributed my “can’t stand to be in front of the computer” phases to just be that I was tired from staring at it so long. (Which is true). But then I went to have fun playing with characters from a previous story in progress… And they were gone. 😢 It was like there was this total disconnect. And it really was scary! This feeling of “am I losing the ability to let my creativity flow freely? To improvise stories? To imagine? Have I lost the ability to let some of my favorite characters come to life?” I did finish the free-write, but it wasn’t the same…

I still feel badly about it, but in the past year, I have lived one of the emotional wounds that main character experiences. So perhaps that is my problem. Living his story means facing a painful reality. And bringing him to an ending I may never know. (Even as I write that, I can’t fully admit it to myself.) I know that when I return to the story it will be all the better for my ability to relate, but I will need to face the pain I keep hidden inside, often from myself. Let it flow out and onto the page. Thank you for this reminder that rest and care are so important to the creative process! What do you do when you come upon an emotional block like this? Just acknowledge it and pray it goes away? This was a story my heart burned to tell, and I still feel it needs to be told. But it is so difficult to think of taking it up again, with the plot holes and emotional blocks to sift through.

Sounds very familiar, and believe me, my heart is with you, because I know exactly how painful and confusing it is. In my experience so far, I believe the path out of this darkness is two-fold: finding the space to discover and hold your own emotions (something that has been very hard for me, since I don’t “do” emotions; until I was thirty, I never cried, but now I cry at the drop of a hat; I don’t always like it, but I see it as a tremendous avenue and sign of healing and growth), and, second, engaging in rigorous self-inquiry, pursuing your fears and doubts and trying to understand their roots.

Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply! The time you spend to help each reader individually- the time you spent to respond and relate just to me- means so much! When I first read your reply, I couldn’t comprehend what “a space to discover and hold your own emotions” even meant. But then I waited. I do feel very intensly for others, or for my characters, although the outward expression is guarded, but I realized I often don’t allow myself the same freedom. If those who love me see I am struggling, they hurt with and for me. And so I focus on all the beautiful things in life, and all the blessings and joys I have, and on the pains and joys of others, but often without facing my own wounds so that they can heal.

I think I am beginning to understand, and to desire and seek that quiet place away from the rush of work, and the glow of the computer. To remember that even as I race a creative deadline in the middle of a season of travel, that time to really grow is important. And I have realized that I fear growth itself, perhaps most of all. That I will lose my childlikeness, or youthful mindset, if I grow. The self that I am right now. Already there are things that have changed – but I remind myself that they are better. I may have lost that innocent love of my childhood that feared no wrong and encompased all. But when you learn to be a true friend in spite of knowing that friends are not always true? When you fight the walls of self-preservation, train yourself to love with the same breadth and depth, and yet do not close your eyes to the dangers? That is better.

And so I am beginning to allow (or push myself towards) prayerfully exploring the wounds, and seeking healing and growth. Even writing this revived a joy and love I had not felt in awhile, because it struck me that those who were my friends, and whom I still love, have helped me to grow by their hurt in ways their friendship never could have done. And I will pray for you as well, that you will come out of this season as gold, with much joy and creativity! <3 "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning." – Psalm 30:5b

“And I have realized that I fear growth itself, perhaps most of all. That I will lose my childlikeness, or youthful mindset, if I grow.”

That’s a very interesting observation. I’m going to have to mull on that some myself.

I benefit from ALL your posts in one way or another – but this one was especially relevant and helpful. In particular, if your energy is going to too many other things, it can’t be going to “creativity.” Simple, brilliant and so timely Thanks!

Thanks for reading! I found a lot of relief in that revelation, simply in that it explains so neatly why it’s more difficult to be creative as a working adult than it was as a carefree child. In knowing the cause, we also gain the ability to work on practical solutions for freeing up more creative resources.

I’ve been struggling with the final battle of my WIP. Weeks, actually. The story has changed and my protagonist isn’t getting what she wanted. I don’t know why I couldn’t write it. so close. And now I do. I am good enough. Like your mom, I’m in my third act. Yay for me that I am lucky enough to get one! Thanks for your honesty.

That’s awesome! You go. 😀

Timely post. I’ve begun to dig myself out of a three-year drought of creativity. Most days its so frustrating, how quickly the day gets frittered away and not a single word on the page! I miss that “high” which comes when you are in the flow. All the souped-up political strife hasn’t helped matters any. How do you write about social justice when, all of a sudden, it’s become a weapon? But lately my creativity has begun to trickle back — in tiny chunks. Returning to church has helped (the LAST place I thought I’d ever step foot back into). I don’t call it “prayer” (too much brainwashing that “religion is the opiate of the masses” blah blah blah), but I like to do positive affirmations as I walk my dog, turning my creativity over to God to use my pen as a sword to wield good in the world. YMMV…

I’m learning to accept and appreciate that returning “trickle” of creativity. Instead of being frustrated that my slice of the cake isn’t as big as I was accustomed to, I’m learning to have genuine gratitude for the sweet dabs of frosting that are showing up again in my life.

Being creative and trusting the process seem to become more difficult the older I get. I started writing thirty years ago when I was already in Act 2. I was creative but not skilled. I’m now in Act 3 and believe I’m equally creative, more skilled (thanks to blogs like yours) but increasing judgmental of what I produce. I think knowledge can produce doubt. Is this the right POV? Who’s story is this really? Would it be more interesting, more powerful if told from the victim’s perspective and not the hero`s? Because I know that I should ask these questions, I’m stuck in a creative quagmire.

One takeaway from your article is that writing should be fun. Writers are story tellers. I think remembering that will help me a lot.

Knowledge does produce doubt. I think it is because knowledge also requires responsibility. As children making up stories in the backyard, we had no understanding of what made a “good” story and therefore no responsibility to create one. But when we take on the challenge of writing stories that will mean something to others, we also accept the responsibility of learning and applying new knowledge. Without question, it becomes an increasingly complicated juggling act. But the one thing I find most helpful to remember is that I will *never* write a perfect story. I just try to make the things I like and make them as pretty as possible–and hope each story will be a little better than the last.

I thought I was the only one! It’s so good to hear that there’s a way back home. Thanks!

Sorry to hear you’re on the path too, but it *is* nice to know we’re not alone. 🙂

You have a deep knowledge of writing and how to teach it. Yours is the only writing blog I read faithfully — and I’ve read a lot. As someone your mother’s age I know that change is essential to living. You have a great foundation to go in so many directions. I absolutely believe you’ll find your way.

The last few years have run afoul of a lot of my expectations about how life should be and how I should be in it. But as the fog begins to clear a bit, I find myself genuinely excited for this journey I’ve been allowed to take. I don’t know how it ends yet. That’s a little frightening (especially for a control freak), but also, dare I say?, magical. 🙂

Like others have mentioned, this is something I needed to read today. Thank you.

So glad it was helpful!

Well Ms. K.M., I’ve been following you for some time and always glean some fabulous insight from your posts. But this one? Wow. Hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m in my late 2nd Act, and suffered 4 aneurysms in my cerebellum from 2015 – 2018, 3 of them requiring surgery. I’m lucky to be alive, I know it; but during that brain trauma I seriously lost my will, ability, and love of writing. I lost the love, I think, because I couldn’t write…I could barely string a full sentence together. But I never lost my desire to create. I did as you said, I read, I watched Bridget Jones movies, I cried, I wrote in my journal, I talked to my cat Tex (who sadly left me for the Great Cat World Beyond just last week); and finally, when I sensed I was ready, I went to a therapist. Some would say I should have gone there first, but sometimes you just aren’t ready with the words you need to speak in order to complete the journey to whole health. At any rate, I found my writer’s voice again early in 2019. I’m back at my computer with joy, I’ve entered contests, I’m a MAGGIE (Georgia Romance Writers) and TARA (Tampa Area Romance Writers) finalist, and no matter the outcome I’ve arrived. Back to where I was in my youth, with the heart and imagination of a 9 year old story-teller, filled with hope and courage and innocence and verve, though I’ve just turned 59. Thanks for this post, K.M. As Ed Sheeran would say…Perfect.

You’re an inspiration! Thank you so much for sharing your story. It’s powerful to hear from someone who has endured so much, including doubt and despair, and climbed back out the other side. Keep writing. 🙂

This is timely. I feel like this every September 1st after taking July and August off from writing, but I’m happy to report that by the 3rd week, the words are flowing, and I’m excited about what I’m now writing. Thank you.

That’s great! Very happy for you. 🙂

I am happy to see you have a positive character arc!

Wonderful post! I think stepping back is great, and if one can be bored at times, that leaves space for the muse to work. Say NO more often. Also, if at all possible, ban toxic people and groups from your personal and professional life and especially from your social media.

Absolutely agree. Learning to set better boundaries has been a huge part of my growth in the last few years.

As I have been approaching the end of my first novel the wall has gotten higher. There are many other opportunities that take me away, but this post helped me review my options and that shadow you mentioned. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks for sharing.

That’s great. Keep writing. 😀

Thank you for sharing this personal post. Since we work alone, it’s easy to forget that we are not alone in this. My days go from total joy in what I’m working on to full-on doubt that I have any business doing this. I’m always excited at the beginning of a project, but then I hit a wall; where are my words? this is a dumb idea, I should get a real job, etc. (having a sibling with a PhD. makes that last one particularly hard). One thing that’s helped me is what you mentioned above: take a deep breath, become aware of what I’m feeling or thinking, and write about it in my project notebook. It usually uncovers something I’ve been resisting or am just fearing for no justifiable reason. And it keeps me writing! Also, I really admire your discipline to the craft. It’s something I struggle with and am working on. Thank you for being here for us.

I do think writers have an advantage in the hard days. The very fact that we spend so much of our time organizing our thoughts and feelings on paper is both a cathartic experience and an opportunity for personal insight. I definitely found that to be true of the novel I worked on in this period of my life.

I’ve been attentive to your personal journey in recent years because I am in a similar place. Though I’m closer to the end of my second act, I experienced what I have called a protracted period of burnout. It lasted a couple of years and I’m still not sure I’ve recovered. It’s hard to say where I’m just being kinder to myself and where my limitations have legitimately contracted around my equally limited capabilities. Thanks for sharing this piece of your puzzle. It’s been very helpful for me and many other writers.

“It’s hard to say where I’m just being kinder to myself and where my limitations have legitimately contracted around my equally limited capabilities.”

I resonate with this. I believe something that I will be focusing on more in time to come is coming to peace with the limitations while recognizing they are perhaps balanced by the blessings of greater understanding and awareness.

Thank-you for this post, I thought the paragraphs on one pot of energy really do ring true. It seems that is applicable whether in a person’s writing life or elsewhere.

Your phrasing makes me see my energy as a cauldron boiling on the back burner. I like that. 😀

I haven’t replied before, but this post demands one, I think. In the past few months, since discovering your work (on recommendation of Writers’ HQ, I think), I’ve worked my way through tens of these posts, responding to them in my own journal and learning *so very much* that I know will improve my writing. To hear you speak of the energy needed for creativity, and how it can be taken up by other things – that’s exactly what happened to me, and it’s what I fight every day. From passionately wanting to be a writer – and writing, too! – when younger, I lost a long time to other things – a career that took everything, really, and then really took it all when I had what I call my “lifecrash” in 2014. And that pushed me to reconsider everything, including where my energies should best go – I’ve written every day now since December 2014. It’s like building up a muscle that had atrophied – I feel like I’ve had to learn it all again – but, here’s the point of my response, it’s blog posts like yours, sharing your ideas and ways of working, that have helped push me along. So – I hope you get the chance to redouble your energies exactly as you write about above, and I hope (perhaps a little selfishly!) there are plenty more blog posts to come. What you’ve created here is an invaluable resource – thank you.

“Lifecrash.” I like that. Well, not like it, but you know… 😉

That’s awesome that you were able to keep writing consistently as you picked up the pieces. It not only gives you something to be proud of, it was also, I’m sure, part of what helped you heal.

Absolutely – it really has, and that’s with people saying “writing, that’s a bit solitary, isn’t it? I wouldn’t do that, if I were you…” No surprise, though, that so much is autobiographical which I’m trying to translate into something more than that.

“so much is autobiographical which I’m trying to translate into something more than that.”

I’ve never purposefully written anything autobiographical. But it’s astounding to me to look back over my body of work and recognize how it was all a processing of my life in ways I didn’t even understand at the time.

I’ve noticed a tie-in between creativity and childishness in my life, and I think this describes the mannerisms of creatives I know, for better or worse. I think there’s something biological to it, actually. (We know people’s brains are far more elastic in youth, and that higher IQ individuals tend to retain that elasticity better.) Not being overly burdened would certainly seem conducive to this mental state. And there certainly seems to be something child-like about a lot of people’s creative output (in a good way.)

Maybe returning to your favorite childhood book/tv show/movie can help you return to that emotional and spiritual state? There’s nothing quite as cathartic as a return to the beginning, I suppose. Or you could perhaps focus on media written primarily for a younger audience.

I recently had a major creative burst after consuming a particular anime, actually. I’m a musician, and I was waking up with new songs in my head every day, which was a pretty fantastic thing to have happen. As you could imagine, I’ve been trying to figure out why – something about being completely immersed and emotionally affected by something, which to me, reeks of child-like openness or dependence. It reminds me of how I feel when I’m imagining a new scene for the story I’m outlining, actually. It’s all pretty hard to articulate, though.

Just thinking out loud. It’s easy to see patterns where there aren’t any, haha. But maybe someone will find this useful. 😛

I think this is spot on. One thing I have been doing, actually, is looking back through old journals. They’re not from childhood, obviously, but I started writing them in my early teens, so they’re still a tool for remembering a lot of things I’ve forgotten about myself.

I’ve also pondered this “refilling the creative well” issue in my own life. One thing I learned was that I have to take the underlying concept of the Sabbath more seriously: operate from a position of being well-rested.

However, in my father’s family, “lazy” is a four-letter word, and I used to get down on myself for taking time out. Couple that with what I suspect is mild ADD, where I tend to decide to reorganize my room when I’m supposed to be doing something else, and I really thought I was lazy. But! I think of great ideas when I’m in the shower, or doing the dishes — in other words, when I’m not “working.” Eventually, the connection dawned on me: there’s value in “play” or “rest” or “goofing off.”

It’s not laziness so much as giving my mind time to roam, or make connections, or puzzle out a problem. It’s putting my mind in an “open mode.” John Cleese gave a lecture on this , where he explained how he came to be one of the more creative Monty Python writers, though he regarded himself as less talented than one of his cowriters. Giving yourself time to think is key.

Also, I’m an introverted lone-wolf type. Yet, I firmly believe there’s value in cultivating friends and people you can bounce ideas off of. I remember why college was so magical: it was the first time in my life where I was surrounded by other creatives. We could talk shop and explore story ideas. I loved critiquing books and movies with a film student friend, because she and I were “on the same page” when it came to good storytelling. Those critiques helped us beef up our craft, because they helped us to see what elements separated the sheep from the goats as it were, and we gave each other ideas.

At the same time, it helps to broaden horizons. I love history, and sometimes a historian mentions being stymied by “X.” That is, until they talked to an outsider whose discipline inherently includes “X,” and that outsider cracked the case. I love the one where historians thought the women’s hairstyles they saw on Roman statues might not have been real, because they couldn’t figure out how to style hair that way. Then a hairstylist found out about this “puzzle,” and she demonstrated exactly how to “do as Romans do” with hairdos. Mystery solved. So, having trouble writing a space opera? Read a romance.

This all resonates pretty strongly with me. The issue for me is maintaining discipline while allowing time to goof off – maintaining the Sabbath might be one solution.

I agree. The Seventh Day Sabbath is the one day of the week where I cease writing.

There are times when writing needs to be spiritual.

I’ve just finished reading Alchemy by Rory Sutherland and at the end, he literally says about 80% of the book was written on days after a day where he had essentially done nothing.

I think it’s good to look back on times that we remember as “magical” and try to understand what convergence of events made it so. We can’t go back, but we can work to understand how we can bring some of those elements forward into the present.

I’m in my third act like your mom. I’ve had to deal the with the sudden loss of my husband about five years ago and soon after a job layoff due to my company closing and then becoming an empty nester. It’s take five years to get back into my writing and I’m still not all there. It’s good to hear that I’m not alone.

Very sorry to hear about your husband. Big life changes have a way of really resetting our perspectives.

Great post! The idea of this journey being a 3 Act structure resonates with us writers. Although I tend to think of it more in 4 parts than 3 (guess I favor Syd Field and Larry Brooks more than I thought), each comprising of 15-year segments. 20-35 = early part of our career, finding our sea-legs in adulthood, the setup to the story we are writing with every choice we make. 35-50 = firmly on the adventure, building upon the expertise we developed in the previous stage but still in the dark, still deciphering the clues to what our lifestory is about (also a time for, hopefully, building wealth), 50-65 = a major turning point in our story, a time when all the questions to life change and some of the antagonistic forces are revealed to be closer than we imagined. 65-80 = A time when the true heroic nature of ourselves is sanctified in the crucible of life’s final conflict, it’s climax, and denouement. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. But this time we return from whence we came … different and, hopefully, a more complete version of who God wants us to be.

The question, I suppose, is that whether we write it in 4 parts or in 3, are we writing towards an end with a clear idea and structure in mind, or are we just winging it all along the way? And if the latter, could this be a significant contributor to the loss of our creativity?

Yeah, I lean into four-part story structure myself. I guess I just resonated with the idea of a life in thirds because turning 30 was a sea change for me in a lot of ways.

This is one of the most amazing and helpful things I have ever read. I struggle with this daily as all writers do, I think.

I believe I mentioned in an email that I have a psychology background, so this really resonated with me. It is brilliant and eloquent—just astonishing. I also have a few insights.

1. I was just about to send you a note today to tell you how THANKFUL I am for so much of the work you have done. For example, your outline and description of the FLAT ARC really saved me and my WIP. It would be dead in the water without your flat arc guidelines. No other books I have seen really get at it the way you do, and everyone else would pretty much force you into a positive arc. Your techniques helped me find the soul of my heroine and I will be forever grateful for that.

2. It seems like you put out a HUGE AMOUNT of energy helping people, and as I have read your archived posts forward to the present I see a real character of arc of wisdom growing and growing. Your own character development is in print, so to speak. Kind of amazing.

3. On the muse: I also write songs and collaborate on many songs as well so I know what a fickle muse creativity can be. The paradox is the same in all art, I think. One thing we all know is that you can never chase a song. If you do, she runs away. I just have to sit with my eyes closed holding a guitar in my lap, remembering when I was twelve and I would sit at the top of the stairs to play my guitar with my eyes closed then so I could hear and feel the beautiful echo. The very wood of the instrument itself was magical in those days and if I ever forget that I am done—I mean the way the guitar became a living creature, some kind of animated object from a fairy tale. In other writing, I often have to go outside or into a small room and write with a pencil on a piece of paper so I can hear that scratching noise and the sound of the lead going down on the paper. That was magic when I was a kid, and if I ever lose that, I know I am done for as well.

4. If you are like anyone else I know in this transition, it may be helpful just to take a deep breath and smile and relax and take stock of all the wonderful things you have done and all the enormous gifts you have given to others.

The karma you have built up is so strong that it is only a matter of time until the dam breaks explosively and that magical waterfall comes down like a torrent.

I absolutely guarantee you that the books you write in this decade will be your most personal, touching, gut-wrenching and awe-inspiring masterpieces.

All of the laws of the Universe are behind you.

Thanks for all you do.

Aww, thanks very much for the kind words. They are deeply appreciated. 🙂

I love what you say about your experience with writing songs and the magical relationship with the guitar as an avatar of your creativity.

This was such a relevant post! My first novel is traveling the world in search of an agent, and I have its sequel largely planned out. But my mother is requiring a lot of attention as her dementia increases, and I have to spend a lot time I used to spend writing (time I had very little of as it was, but I was making it work) managing the search for a new place for her to live, transportation — the whole process of taking over doing the things she used to do for herself.

I’m scared to start writing again, I think, because my mind is going in so many different directions right now, none of which have anything to do with my story, and I’m afraid I’ll get a little ways and be interrupted. I’m at the start of my third act as well, and I’m afraid I’ll run out of time.

Your quote on Twitter this weekend resonated with me, the idea that whatever we can shovel into the sandbox for a first draft is material for carving out the second draft. Perhaps I need to give myself the freedom to put in little red plastic spadefuls, not big ditch-digger shovels full, knowing that it will all pile up for future refinement.

I absolutely believe there are times when we have to step back from the page for a while. But I also think it’s often worthwhile to try to keep writing, even if it’s just for twenty minutes a day. Keeping one hand on that creative lifeline can make a lot of difference in the hard times.

Thank you for the Post. Even as we go through these periods of slow or low creativity our energy is being used in other areas like you mentioned. Even when we think we aren’t learning we’re still learning something. And we can take that knowledge that we’ve learned by living to make us better writers. Having lived with the frustration and the uncertainty have not knowing where that energy went, gives us insight to what we normally may not have access to. Even when we’re writing about nothing the stream of consciousness, acting as a Dumping Ground to clear out our brains that’s still something. A springboard into the unknown. I’m glad to see I’m not alone in my journey of doubt and low creativity, health problems have slowed me down but the feelings I experienced during the low point if I choose to look back on them give me knowledge and experience I would not have otherwise. Thank you Kate!

This quote from Thoreau has run through my mind a lot: “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

This resonates for me but weirdly in a sort of opposite direction. For many years I’ve been in highly demanding, highly creative jobs and wanted to write, but never seemed to have the time or the energy.

Now, I’m in a job where I’m bored out of my skull and that creativity cauldron is boiling over. I’m writing like I never have before.

The job has to change, it’s doing my head in. But, now that I’ve opened the gates to this part of my creativity, I’ll need to make sure I can balance work I can enjoy and be stimulated by and maintaining the energy to write the stories bouncing around in my brain.

Thank you for the clarity!

That’s awesome. To everything a season. This is a good reminder for those of us currently riding the ebb of the wave.

I always read your blogs for take-aways I can apply to my life as a writer, and I’m never disappointed. Thank you for your honesty in this blog. I look back to my thirties as my most creative period. Being a single mom took 95% of my energy, but I hid that last 5% in my heart and wrote songs on the park-and-ride bus to and from work. God poured His words & music through me almost faster than I could write them down! Looking back, the writing that came from that traumatic time was phenomenal, and I know it’s how I survived. I wrote my first poem at 13 and my first novel at 24, but I’m older now, and like you so bravely confessed, it’s harder to summon the creative energy that used to be second nature. When my sewer line exploded, I faced several months of restoration work with no money, and I shut down writing-wise to deal with contractors. A woman in my critique group had her house flooded during Harvey. Another member had her house burn to the ground. A third survived cancer. Having that support group and the sure knowledge that this life is temporary at best helped, but basically you have to wait it out. You stand quietly. You read books about writing. You jot down ideas for later. You watch movies and study plot lines and dialogue. You are not alone in thinking that window of creativity is shrinking. But is not writing even an option? After all, it’s the only thing that keeps us sane in an insane world.

“…but basically you have to wait it out. You stand quietly. You read books about writing. You jot down ideas for later. You watch movies and study plot lines and dialogue. You are not alone in thinking that window of creativity is shrinking. But is not writing even an option? After all, it’s the only thing that keeps us sane in an insane world.”

This is so spot on!

Can hidden anger be another problem I’m battling that is using my creative energy?

I’d say, definitely. IMO, anger is usually a defensive front for a deeper pain or fear we’ve yet to confront.

I’ve been struggling with my latest story. I’ve been endeavoring to employ most of the writing tips you (and a few others) have given me over the past year. I’m at the last confrontation scene in my story and I’m stuck. I can’t decide which characters I should or should not kill or even how. I feel like I’m way over my head and I’m afraid I’l write a ho hum ending. I deplore glitz, nonetheless I don’t want to be lazy and disappoint the reader.

So I have decided to put it aside for awhile and come back later and do something else creative and been dying to do namely write music. To do this I have two sources: MuseScore and youtube.

MuseScore is a free virus free downloadable music notation software https://musescore.org/en . It has a number of instruments to choose from. You cannot only see what you’ve written, but also can hear it when you play it.

Youtube I’ve gone to to learn music theory.

My advice is (unless you have a deadline from a publisher) do something else creative: write music and/or songs, poetry. paint or draw a picture, do wood work and or garden.

God created us in His image and one of His attributes is being creative. In other words we are programmed or wired to be creative. So go and create and have fun.

This is great. I’ve poured a lot of energy (and enjoyment) into interior design projects these last few years. It’s been a rewarding and cathartic alternative to my more traditional artistic pursuits. I’ve joked that it’s my therapy. 😉

By the way, I enjoyed your article and it has given me things to think about and explore.

Thanks for stopping by! 🙂

Oh, my goodness–I emphasize with this. I’m 34, and for the last three years or so, I’ve felt like the wardrobe to Narnia in my mind has been slowly closing. It’s been not only more difficult for me to write the fantasy and cyberpunk that I normally love to create, but more difficult to read and engage with it, as well. It left a hole in me I couldn’t fill with anything else.

I’m a senior copywriter at a health insurance company, and so I think that’s where a lot of my creativity and energy goes. But it’s not only that–there’s more to my decline, and I think you just helped me figure out the last few of my impediments with this post. Thank you. I mean that.

Something else that really helped me, I found, was novelty. Trying new things and going new places. Something about the New unlocks my creativity and leaves my mind active and more “roomy,” for lack of a better term. So I make an effort to explore the woods, go to events, attend to a live symphony that includes my favorite film soundtracks, and so on. It makes an enormous difference in my creative energy level.

Our creativity uses the raw material of the entirety of our experiences, breaking them down into the colors that make up our literary palette, so it’s no wonder this works out so well for me. 🙂

“I’ve felt like the wardrobe to Narnia in my mind has been slowly closing.”

Bam. Great analogy.

Confession: I fully understood the meaning of creativity when I experienced cognitive decline. In other words, human’s capabilities that diminish in strength or quality are typically noticeable when the fear of losing “the younger version of you” grows. But like most things in life, controlling self-traits is only an illusion. And this brings me to only one conclusion: Don’t fret when you feel that you’re losing your creativity, because nothing declines or rises forever. Just like a good story, we are all designed to ride beams of light that temporarily buckle under the pressure of inconsistent gravity…

I appreciate that. I feel like that is what I am learning right now. It’s a time of learning to let go, rather than hanging on and trying so hard to control outcome.

You are one of the most creative persons I know! I’m glad came into contact with you over the last few years of my life—which have been the hardest. I echo what you said about healing psychologically, physically, spiritually, or creatively. It seems we’re our own worst enemy at times, the worst critic, pummeling ourselves into a formless pulp until we’re paralyzed.

I thought the “Acts of Life” analogy was good too. Whether we’re in the first, second, third, climax, or conclusion of our lives, God is the author. Give your mom a high five for us 🙂 I love the way you used the word “husbanding” too. That’s creative! Seriously, to consistently put together these great posts every week is hard evidence. Just think how many writers you’ve help become more creative in their writing!!!

I’ve been paralyzed myself for some years. Learning to take a viable idea and shape it into a story is no easy feat. But anyways, I had a little “aha” moment that helped to write just 60 words of an opening scene that tied up a few challenging matters of my WIP. I know it’s only 60 words but it FELT SO GOOD. I actually wrote something.

I’m not sure if I subscribe to the window of creativity in relation to age. Perhaps I’m too simple, or hopeless optimist. I’m sure it’s a lot harder if you do it full time though. There’s plenty of distractions to keep me from writing. But I think it was David Baldacci who said finding time to write is also creativity. Cool eh?

I’ve always considered creativity to be an act of bravery. This is probably why it’s sometimes so hard. But also why it’s inevitably so rewarding. 🙂

Hi K.M. I always find your articles relevant, truthful and hard-hitting – and this was no exception! Just this morning I woke up with a sadness, longing to just close my eyes and be instantly in that creative place where my imagination runs wild.

I appreciate your theories on what makes our creativity diminish over time. As a busy wife and mom of 2 extremely busy kids and another on the way often times the last thing on my to-do list is actual writing. My energy is too divided. The enneagram however sounds like a great tool and one which I’ll be looking into in more detail, even as I continue to try and carve just a few minutes out of every day to write.

I certainly feel dedication and stewarding our gifts well is key to pulling ourselves out of the mire. I suppose it’s like any calling or profession in life. We have our good days and our bad, days we perform exceptionally and are rewarded for those efforts and others where we wish the day had never dawned.

Thank you for insightful articles which are always so timely and relevant. And for being willing to share your own experiences and lessons learnt for the benefit of others! I really value your work and turn to your articles time and again when looking for guidance on everything from actual story structure to some much needed motivation.

I’ve always said moms who write are superheroes. 🙂

Hi Katie! When I write fiction, one thing that always helps me is imagining that my teenage daughter is again much younger – and I am sitting by her bed at night telling her a bedtime story. She used to be mesmerized with my bedtime stories LOL even when they weren’t that good. I would just make them up as I went. But her attentiveness and appreciation brought a satisfaction to me for creating the story and created a motivation inside me to make the story really, really good! Not sure how, but I’m pretty sure this helped bolster by creativity because I had a purpose in telling the story to my daughter. Even today, putting myself in the frame of mind of “telling a bedtime story” helps me a great deal. As I struggle today to write my first fiction novel, I often let my daughter read my outline and sections of my draft-in-progress so that she can see the process and even give her ideas and suggestions. Deep down, I’m hoping that she may pick up on the art of story telling herself – but I also want her to really enjoy the story, just as she did when she was younger at bedtime. I also see my daughter’s enjoyment of a story as a good measure of how good the story really is (now that she is older and will tell me when some part of the story just isn’t the best in her opinion and why). I guess my summary of this is that, for me, involving loved ones in every aspect of the process can make a huge difference.

That’s wonderful that your daughter can be involved in your writing. Sharing creative pursuits, in any capacity, is tremendous. 🙂

I believe the creative part of our brains is indeed childlike. As the adult side of our brain takes control, we may develop a disfunctional relationship with that creative child and start reasoning with it critically and harshly, expecting it to be more adult, tougher, more mature. When the reasoning side of our mind does this to the creative, childlike side, we frighten the child into running and hiding in her room, afraid that whatever she tries will be criticized and ridiculed. We experience this phenomenon as a loss of creativity or writer’s block.

One way to deal with this is to speak to our creative side as if she is a child. When a child presents us with a creation we don’t think is very good, we should be encouraging for the effort and provide constructive ways to improve things. “Wow, that’s a really good start! But, maybe you can get this part a little better?” Rather than, “Oh, that stinks! Why can’t you get it right? Is that the best you can do?”

When we develop our critical side, we discover more about what we think is good. When our creative side falls short of our ideal, we are tempted to let the full force of our critical mind crush the creative child. Our critical side needs to think of itself as a parent of the creative side, and treat that beautiful child like a beautiful child, and not like a sweatshop owner overseeing an illegal child labor racket.

There is no greater feeling than when our critical side looks at what the childlike side has done and says, “Now, that is really good!” And that creative child wants so much to please our critical mind. But the way to get there is to encourage the creative child, talk to her as a child, and be a good parent and guide.

To be at our best, the parent and child need to work together in love. The parent tasking, directing and encouraging the child. But we need both sides. Undisciplined children can really make a mess.

If you find yourself blocked or struggling to be creative, go knock on that child’s door, and coax her out. “I’m so sorry I was so hard on you. Won’t you come out? Let’s work together and see if we can make something really great! I promise, I won’t ever be hard on you like that again.”

Literally talk to yourself as if you are a parent encouraging a child, a child who does not understand big words or complex concepts. Make your mind-world safe for play and experimentation. Laugh with your creative child if she suggests something silly. If you get this relationship right, you will be happier and more creative.

Then, when you do get to something really great, I promise, the mind party you will have will be the thing we live for. That inner child will jump for joy and do cartwheels across the floor. And the inner parent will weep for joy.

“There is no greater feeling than when our critical side looks at what the childlike side has done and says, “Now, that is really good!” And that creative child wants so much to please our critical mind. But the way to get there is to encourage the creative child, talk to her as a child, and be a good parent and guide.”

This is really well said.

That’s an amazing way to see it. I love how you phrased this. Creativity is one of my favorite topics for some reason.

It’s a topic of endless wealth, that’s for sure. 😉

Thanks for sharing. You’re one of the most creative persons I know. Creating stories and great posts every week is hard evidence. I’m not a full time writer so I won’t pretend to know what you’re going through at this point in your life. At 45, I’m well into the second act of life. Love that analogy by the way. The last decade has been onslaught of traumatic experiences to wade through. But during this time writing poetry, discovering your books and blogs has helped me discover my creative side. So I’m really grateful for that. Energy wise I’ve hit a brick wall the last 7 or so years, especially the last 5. The good part is that our creativity is still there!!! Just waiting to come out any chance it gets.

I tried posted last night but it disappeared somewhere. Apologize in advance of any double posting.

Looks like the first comment got flagged for some reason and was waiting approval. It’s up now as well. But thanks again for the kind words! It’s great to hear the blog has been useful to you. 🙂

Of course! It’s always helpful. I’m definitely going to come around more like I used to. It’s been in the back of my head for a while now.

Always good to have you around. 🙂

You have great articles as always. I’m in my 30’s. I am struggling with getting my book finished and also doing character profiles for my characters. I like to watch movies like Anne of Green Gables the Continuing Story . I also think working on my weight is also a struggle because I want to be 140 pounds and not 170 pounds being only 5’3″. I am still going to self publish my books. When I was in school I did not like some people said my first name wrong. I don’t have a boy friend yet. I want one who loves his mom. I will have children one day.

These are great goals. Good for you. 🙂

Saw this on LitHub after reading your post and thought of you. https://lithub.com/maybe-the-secret-to-writing-is-not-writing/

Wow. Loved her closing lines.

“During those two years when I believed I was blocked, I was reading. I was traveling. I was grieving. I was falling in love. I was going to art galleries and listening to music and flying to Michigan with a new puppy for my parents and cooking chicken with 50 cloves of garlic with my sibling and drinking black coffee and falling asleep with my head on my beloved’s chest and watering the pots of aloe that line my windowsill. All that time, without realizing it, I was writing.”

Hi, K.M Weiland !!!

I’ve always wanted to drop you a comment but my fellow writers have always expressed what I wanted to say …

First of all, I think you’re BRILLIANT and an AMAZING WRITER and so HUMAN… I deeply admire your discipline, passion and commitment to study the craft and yet share it with us. (Even though, when you put too much of the CONSCIOUS brain in it, it can be dangerous. Everything FLOWS better after we let go of thinking TOO MUCH and trust in our DEEP. Not that I don’t like learning the craft myself that’s why I’ve come across you. And like you, I LOVE learning how a writer I LOVE does it and absorb his insights) I guess that sometimes it must be a real struggle to keep going and this is so HUMAN… After reading this post I’ve just fell even more in love with you cause you’re so HUMAN… I just love the EMOTIONS I feel reading your post and the others your WORLDS full of human passions and limitations invokes in me. We need it! We want to feel. We want to experience. That’s what makes us alive, right? It’s so much disasters, reactions and sequences that our MIND goes spinning out-of-control with so much to acknowledge every single day. And we need these outlets to keep going, to give us hope, to give us faith… But, I firmly believe all of us, in the end, are going to be rewarded beyond our wildest dreams for our courage to FEEL all of them. For our courage to be HUMAN. Don’t worry! As long as you’re HUMAN, you’ll never run out of creativity. Your ability to imagine and create will never, ever, ever, leave you. It’s your very breath… Keep pushing through your SECOND ACT. Your FIRST ACT was FABULOUS already! You’ve done so much, that I on the sideline can only stand in awe and only dream of writing as beautifully as you.

Aww, thank you so much, Aimee. 🙂 This is a great pep talk for all of us humans. 😀

Aimee, wonderfully said! I couldn’t agree more. And Katie, you are a magical beautiful soul and writer. I, too, am in awe of what you’ve accomplished at such a young age. My first thought when you said you were 33 was “to buckle up, dear! You’ve barely just begun this wild rollercoaster ride we call life!” LOL! BTW, wasn’t Jesus resurrected at 33? I’m not Christian but 33 and 3 are very powerful numbers with angels and in numerology. This is a 3 year of creativity and Sept. is a 3 month so were getting it full force and there are many many spiritual teachers talking about shadow work right now (there’s good reason for that!) so your bringing it up is perfect and I loved your perspective. Debbie Ford is the one who brought it to the forefront decades ago. She really was an angel on Earth and her past was quite dramatic, which she used for inspiration to help heal so many. Timing and the astrological forces and the amazing solar energies we’re getting from the Sun and the heavens are blasting everyone in ways this year like never before so you have not been alone in your long struggle that’s been intensifying for even the most advanced spiritual teachers and as people are finally waking up all over the world. I believe our creative forces will be rising in such powerful, positive ways like no one has ever imagined after this next new moon. An exciting time to be alive. It’s taken me all the way to my 54-years to learn how to embrace my shadows, work with their gifts, love and listen to my body’s language, and begin to take my writing seriously rather than giving away my power by selling it to corporations on subjects that weren’t even my passion, for material rewards. So I’m continually in awe and inspired about the future of our world when I read such deep HUMAN feeling and wise words from young people like yourself. This post really spoke to me in that way and was so heart-centered, even if a bit monkey-minded (who doesn’t do that?), that I just wanted to hug you! You are so blessed to have a close, wonderful relationship with your mother. Devouring more and more information has long been a driving force for me (always will be), but now I’m committing myself more to a focused practice to what I already know, listening to my higher Self, and not running away from the necessary, patient waiting inbetween times (a long-running programming in my body’s cellular memory so tbc…) But I just wanted to thank you for all you do and acknowledge how far ahead of the curve you are at this stage of your life, further than most have come in a whole life in prior generations. You are a gifted, talented, beautiful teacher with so much more to come I can’t wait to see what else you create no matter how long it takes. To the ever-evolving journey…much love!

Thanks for sharing your wisdom, experience, and kindness. Your words are very encouraging! Keep being awesome. 🙂

@Aimee hit the nail on the head. You are doing—and have done—such a fantastic job with your creativity, your dedication and self-discipline, being a hugely helpful mentor, and so much more… Fast approaching my third act, and struggling with an overwhelming challenge, you’ve given me hope and perspective. Thanks so much for this post. It was just what I needed to read.

I wish you all the best with your own challenge. 🙂

I, too, am in a season of healing and change, and have not been as productive creatively as I would like. These words hit home for me and are very encouraging. Thank you for your vulnerability and wisdom.

It’s comforting to know what we’re experiencing, however unique it may be for us, is not abnormal. 🙂

As one who is two-thirds through my third act, I believe one’s creativity increases as memories and living itself become more meaningful. By eighty years old, I have known such a variety of people, traveled to thirty-four countries, and experienced so many emotional states, including the death of my spose and the murder of my daughter. I have watched young people grow into adults and parents. I believe the secret to creativity is loving life and all things alive.

What a inspiringly full life. Very sorry to hear about your losses though. 🙁

Three years ago I began my Third Act. The year before at the end of my Second Act I took a fall which started a journey of pain that was unrelenting and led me through a morass of medical opinions, tests, surgeries, and ended with a complex spinal fusion (my third) in March of this year. Not all things go as we wish, and this recovery is the longest I’ve experienced. I’m told by my surgeon it will last another 18 months or more. These nearly four years I have felt the draining of my creativity. I lost my focus to pain and pain meds. I’ve been living in a fog, and I’ve not yet returned to seriously working or writing anything other than my blog posts.

I can’t begin to tell you what your courage in writing the words in this post have done for me tonight. I’m battling among other things depression from what I feel I have lost. You’ve given me hope and shed light on what I’ve been believing about myself and my chosen craft. Now I can respect you not only as an exceptional writer and teacher, but as a woman who takes in hand her problems and works them out. Then she turns around and shares her answers with her followers. Bless you!

So sorry to hear about your painful journey. You an unrelenting force of cheerfulness and goodwill! I wish you absolutely all the best with your recovery.

Sherrey, I’m so sorry you’re going through so much. My husband was in a car wreck 2 years ago and had his 3rd spinal fusion last December and his second knee replacement in August. I’m sure he could relate to everything you’ve said here. Between the pain and the meds, he’s stopped making art, and some days are a struggle just to get up and function. But together we try to find the bright spots, even small ones, in each day. I hope you heal soon and well, and your bright spots grow more frequent.

This is one of the most moving posts I can recall from you; it resonates with me. I appreciate your openness and directness and clarity in addressing something that can’t have been easy for you (or any of us). This sounds like what I have needed for a while now, without even letting myself realize it before. Thank you.

So glad you enjoyed the post! Thanks for taking the time to read. 🙂

Thank you. Your companionship was exactly what I needed this morning. I was, for the first time in my life, considering giving up writing for just the reasons you talked about. My creativity has abandoned me and I’m on my knees asking my inner child, and God, and The Creative Force of the Universe – Why? What have I done? Why have you left me? I am frustrated and discouraged, filled with self-doubt in ways I have never felt before. Reading that you have experienced this as well has given me a glimmer of hope that perhaps it’s not just time to give it up and walk away, that perhaps it is just part of the process and I am still a member of the Writer’s Club #imstillwriting 🙂 I know many before me have written to say your words are helpful, your creativity is inspiring, but I wanted you to hear it again and I hope the light and the passion returns to both of us soon. Also, as a mother of a very busy daughter who lives thousands of miles away from me, I loved how you started this post sharing that you talk with your mom every day about everything and nothing. Mom’s are grateful for continued connection with their daughters. Thank you!

#imstillwriting

I like that. I’m keeping it. 😉

And I wish you all the best as we continue onwards and upwards!

Thanks once again for sharing your struggles with us, Katie. It brings me hope, having gone through similar experiences. It could just be me, but I’ll bet every serious writer has known that terrible time of feeling uncreative at some point. I think you’re dead on when you express the need to face our own fears and shadows in order to refill our dry creative wells, otherwise we end up continually spending our energy putting it off. I also agree, creativity is so much more than making art. If we allow it, creativity can seep its way into everything we do. Of course, it comes at a cost (energy being one of them) and we have to decide what is worth expending creative energy on. This is often a hard decision, but I think any regular use of creativity helps one grow in all aspects of a creative life, even though the results aren’t always apparent.

Thank you for sharing the things that God is teaching you through the dark night of the soul. My writing has been extremely dry lately. Reading your article encourages me because I can see how the struggles of life have been eating away my energy and thereby stealing my creativity. The fact that my creativity can return in time is bliss. God will restore the years the locust has eaten. Perseverance is only built by pushing through the hard times with the grace the Lord provides. He’s not done with me yet, and will get my writing where He wants it. Your encouragement through your vulnerability in sharing is a big blessing. May the Lord restore your creativity by the boatload.

Thanks for such an encouraging post and for the great advice. I’ve been struggling too, it seems like for almost the last decade, due to various family problems and job problems. But your advice about faithfulness to projects has worked well for me. I try to just show up and write each day, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Sometimes that’s all it takes to pull me into the magic and passion of creating. Other times, I grind out an obligatory paragraph or two and call it good. But forward motion, however small, gives me the encouragement I need to show up the next day and do it again.

I also want to thank you for your wonderful books on writing. I’m using Structuring Your Novel and Outlining Your Novel to lay out my second novel (and to get ready for NaNoWriMo), and they are both super-helpful.

Thank you so much for this wonderful blog and the wealth of information and teaching envouragement in every post that you so unselfishly share with everyone.

It is my first time commenting. Ive always felt i dont know enough to be a writer. Iam sixty two this year and have still not completed any writing.

Since my laptop was stolen i have been scrambling around for drafts which i could work from but havnt had any success.

I have found myself in that tunnel with those shadows lurking around me still wanting to drain my creativity. Thank you for this awesome post you have encouraged me, it truly gave me a wake up call to forget about my losses and stop waiting for the creativity to return.

I can now start by showing up with pen and notebook day by day revitalise energy and create new ideas.

Once again thank you so much for your brilliance and love tha you share.i have learnt a great lesson today. God bless.

Very insightful article! I’ve long thought creativity is very energy-intensive, but thinking of walls being put up and using further energy is VERY intriguing. I think that people who are creative are more easily hurt. They’re more open to beauty and wonder, but also put up walls as time goes on to protect their fragile inner selves the more negative experiences they have. And that this walls up creativity is such an interesting concept. I got used to people laughing at my joy in beauty and my cringing at ugliness, and have realised that I’ve suffered abuse of many forms throughout my life. Being an author is a very vulnerable enterprise, and that requires both being open and being resilient. Working on both, and working on healing through natural means, by God’s enabling!

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Is It Too Late to Start Writing?

Perhaps you’ve always wanted to be a writer but haven’t made it happen yet. 

There are so many reasons why you might not have made the leap from aspiring to write to actually starting to do it yet.

Maybe you doubt whether you’re good enough. Maybe writing has never seemed like an important enough priority to dedicate your time to. Maybe you think you’ve waited so long to start that it’s too late. 

No matter what your reason for not writing yet is, there’s one thing that’s certain. Your desire to write hasn’t gone away yet, has it? Even if you’ve waited decades to get started, or told yourself every reason under the sun why you’re not good enough, your dream is very much still alive. 

The fact that you still want to write is everything you need to know. No more excuses. It’s time to make it happen. 

Next time you find yourself doubting if it’s still possible for you to start writing, hold onto these four important facts.

You have more life experience 

Unlike a lot of ways of spending time, writing isn’t made worse by waiting. It’s actually kind of a tradeoff. 

The earlier you start to write, the more experience of the technical craft of writing you have. The repetition of sitting down and getting words onto a page is a valuable discipline and one it takes time to develop. 

But, counterintuitively, all the time you spent not writing has made you a better writer.

Unlike a lot of skills, good writing is a mixture of the technical competency of the person doing it and the blend of life experiences they’ve had up until that point.

All the time you spent on something other than writing was just preparation for getting started. Yes, you’ll need to spend some time sharpening your craft and the practical side of writing. But all of the things you’ve learned and experiences you’ve had will enrich your writing in a way that wouldn’t be possible if you’d started earlier. 

So when you next try to trick yourself into feeling like you’ve wasted however many years not writing, stop and remember the truth. You were making yourself a better writer the entire time. So don’t let all your training go to waste!

You can always do things differently

It’s easy to make the mistake of confusing what you do with who you are.

If you’ve spent years wanting to write but never taking the time to get started, you might confuse your lack of action with your identity. You might hold beliefs like “I’m not the kind of person who could be a writer” or “someone who should be a writer would have started by now”. In turn, those beliefs end up holding you back further. 

Instead of holding on to these limiting beliefs , take the time to see things in a more empowering way. Being a writer is as simple as committing to some form of writing and making it happen. If you commit to writing a single page and do it after finishing this article, you’re now a writer.

In truth, telling yourself that you’re not a writer isn’t really about writing at all. It’s actually about the fear of failure . 

It’s easier to stay in your comfort zone and tell yourself false stories about why you don’t write than it is to face the possibility of finding it tough. 

Once you recognize that you might be fearful of writing, you can take steps to reduce the fear you’re feeling. It’s important not to think too far ahead. Don’t think about whether your writing will be any good or if people will enjoy it or not. Be very easy on yourself and let action be your only measure of success. As long as you’re writing, you’re succeeding. 

Like so many things, starting writing is often the hardest part. Once you build even a little bit of momentum and progress a snowball effect will kick in. You’ll gradually gain confidence and competency until you couldn’t imagine being anything other than a writer. 

Your work is in harmony with the world

If you had started writing earlier in your life, your output would have reflected the values of the world around you at that time. 

Think about how many people, writers and otherwise, have their past mistakes dragged up and amplified on social media these days. That’s not the way things should be, but it’s the world we live in. 

Let’s imagine your writing that began decades ago featured views or language that society no longer finds acceptable. This happens all the time, with controversies relating to classic works of literature as well as more contemporary fiction authors like Stephen King or J.K Rowling.

By starting writing later in life, you give yourself a clean slate. You can ensure your body of work reflects the person you’ve become and the things you now believe. There are countless writers out there who wish they had the same opportunity.

What’s more, you’ve also avoided pigeonholing yourself into a particular style or genre. Once writers have a reputation, and a fanbase with a particular set of expectations, it’s hard to switch styles and write something fresh and unexpected.

Waiting until now to start writing means you’ve reached the perfect time to choose your style. You can write in any niche genre you want thanks to the possibilities of independent publishing . There’s no longer a need to serve the mainstream market unless that’s what you want to do.

Today’s writers have a wider range of influences and opportunities than ever before. So isn’t this the perfect era to begin?

You’re in great company

Becoming a writer a little later in life means you’re in great company.

Some of the most successful and beloved authors weren’t writers in their earlier years. Black Beauty author Anna Sewell had health issues and passed away a matter of months after her classic was published. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Frank McCourt’s memoir Angela’s Ashes was published when he was 66.

Isn’t it encouraging that it’s not only possible to become a good writer at any point in your life, but also potentially one of the best out there?

So please don’t make the mistake of holding yourself back from writing. If it’s something you love, you almost owe it to yourself to try. As long as there’s breath in your lungs, there’s still time.

There’s no point in living with regret, so why not get started right away?

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Using partnerships and corporations to transfer farm assets

• Managing a farm
• Transfer and estate planning
• Utilizing partnerships and corporations to transfer farm assets

Quick facts

• Establishing a business entity, such as a partnership or corporation, can help with the process of transferring a farm business to the next generation.
• In Minnesota, there are two major categories of partnerships: partnerships and limited partnerships. 
• The two corporation entities available to farm businesses are S corporation and C corporation.

Developing any business entity is a complicated process. Seek assistance from a qualified legal expert and accounting assistance if you plan to explore developing a business entity.

Transferring the farm business to the next generation can be a daunting task. However, there are strategies and methods that can help simplify the process.

When operating as a sole proprietorship, it can be challenging to establish a transition plan. There are many individual assets that need to be accounted for such as machinery, equipment, livestock and land. It is difficult and time consuming to transfer separate, individual assets.

One possible solution is to establish a business entity such as a partnership or a corporation to accomplish the business transition. As members and owners of the entity, the parents are issued ownership shares or shares of stock in the entity. These shares can be sold, gifted or passed through an estate to the entering generation, over time, as a method of transferring the business. This does away with the need to transfer separate, individual assets. This also spreads out the parent’s income and thus tax obligations. It allows the entering generation the ability to acquire assets over time thus minimizing their need for large amounts of capital. 

In Minnesota, there are two major categories of partnerships: 1. partnerships and 2. limited partnerships. There are separate entities under each category which function differently.

1. Partnerships

There are two entities: general partnerships and limited liability partnerships.

General partnerships (GP)

Two or more people are required for the GP and are referred to as general partners. All partners are generally liable for all debts and obligations of the GP. There is no liability protection for their personal or partnership assets. Minnesota state law does not require a written partnership agreement. However, such an agreement outlining decision making and job responsibilities might be useful. If the name of the partnership is that of the partners (Henderson Family Partnership), the entity does not have to be registered with the State of Minnesota. The entity is taxed as a partnership, pass-through entity, with income allocated to each partner based on their ownership and included in their personal income tax.

Limited liability partnerships (LLP)

The LLP is similar to the GP with exceptions. All partners are general partners (no limited partners) but their liability exposure is limited to the assets they have placed into the LLP. Their personal assets are protected from liability exposure. The LLP is required to register with the Secretary of State in Minnesota. The LLP is taxed as a partnership, pass-through entity.

2. Limited partnerships

There are three partnership categories: limited partnership (LP), limited liability limited partnership (LLLP), and limited liability company (LLC).

Limited partnership (LP)

Two or more persons are required. There are both general and limited partners. General partners have no liability protection for their business assets but do for their personal assets. The limited partners’ assets in the LP as well as their personal assets have liability protection under the LP. The LP is required to register with the Secretary of State in Minnesota. and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture to comply with the Minnesota Corporate Farm Law. The LP is taxed as a partnership, pass-through entity.

Limited liability limited partnership (LLLP)

Two or more people are required. There are both general and limited partners and they have liability protection of both their LLLP assets and their personal assets. The State of Minnesota requires the LLLP be registered with the Secretary of State and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture to comply with the Minnesota Corporate Farm Law. The LLLP is taxed as a partnership, pass-through entity.

Limited liability company (LLC)

Requires only one person as a member of the entity. From a tax standpoint, the LLC can be taxed as a partnership pass-through entity or as an S Corporation. In addition, the LLC can afford tax savings via discounting assets and potential savings of self-employment taxes. The LLC provides liability protection much like that of a corporation.

The LLC has both members and managers. Members elect or appoint a board of directors. The State of Minnesota requires that the LLC register with the Secretary of State and the Minnesota Corporate Farm Law of Agriculture to comply with the Minnesota Corporate Farm Law.

The LLC can offer one additional level of liability protection by being registered in one of what are referred to as “protective states”. Although the list changes occasionally, some of the protective states include: Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Nevada, New Jersey, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia and Wyoming. These states have written their LLC statutes to include an additional level of liability protection as long as the LLC members abide by all the statute rules. It is legal to register, for example, your Minnesota farm business in one of these protective states and still operate in Minnesota as you have been. You would need a contact in the state where registered. That contact would establish the entity on your behalf and at year end send you a K-1 form for income and you file your tax return just as you do now. This is a complicated process so seek expert legal help if you decide to develop an LLC in one of the protective states.

Registering with Minnesota Department of Agriculture

For the entities that are required to register with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture  for compliance with the Minnesota Corporate Farm Law, this is an annual requirement and there is a $15 fee required to file the documentations. In addition, land held in trust must also register annually with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture for compliance with the Minnesota Corporate Farm Law.

As mentioned, partnerships pay no income taxes. All profit/loss, capital gains and credits are passed through to the partners on a prorated basis, depending upon the percent of ownership. However, the partnership must file a Form 1065 informational tax return, which is due each year by April 15.

Advantages and disadvantages

An advantage over sole proprietorship is that the owners have ownership units or shares. These units or shares can be sold, gifted or passed through an estate as a means of transferring the business over time to the entering generation.

One disadvantage with a partnership, except the LLC, is that the death of a shareholder or willful withdrawal by a partner can seriously disrupt partnership operations. The partnership agreement, if put into place at time of formation of the entity, should clearly describe buy-out provisions or state how the remaining partners are protected, no matter how circumstances change.

Partnership tax laws

Partnership tax laws are similar to individual tax laws. A partnership can generally take over the depreciation schedule of contributed machinery or buildings. A partnership can claim the Section 179 depreciation expense which is passed on pro rata to the partners. Each partner can claim depreciation, which includes his or her portion of the partnership allocation plus any other personal Section 179 depreciation.

Partnership members are self-employed individuals and must pay self-employment tax on their share of earned partnership profits. Partnerships do not receive the favorable tax treatment on fringe benefits (medical, accident and life insurance, housing and meals) as do “C” corporations. However, it generally costs less to form a partnership than a corporation and partnerships can be less formal to operate.

There are two corporation entities available to farm businesses. They are: S corporation and C corporation.

1. S corporation

The S corporation offers a higher level of asset liability protection than a sole proprietorship and some of the partnerships. It must be registered with the Secretary of State in Minnesota. The S corporation is taxed as a pass-through entity with profits allocated to the stock shareholders based upon their ownership percentage. The income then shows up on the shareholders personal income tax. There is no double taxation issue.

Business operating assets can be placed into the S corporation or they can be left out with only the corporate checkbook as part of the corporation operating entity. Placing assets into the corporation is a non-taxable event but getting them out is not. For that reason, it is a general rule of thumb not to place land into the corporation. See your attorney and accountant for advice specific to your situation.

2. C corporation

The C corporation also affords a higher level of asset protection than the sole proprietorship or some of the partnership entities. The C corporation offers longevity to the business because it is technically an entity onto itself with a life of its own. That is, people can enter and leave the C corporation and it continues on without interruption. It also affords many tax advantages regarding deductible expenses.

The C corporation however, can be subject to double taxation. The dividends paid to shareholders are taxed. If the corporation is not growing or acquiring new assets resulting in the corporation retaining earnings, those earnings can be taxed as well. Corporate tax rates are generally higher than other tax rates. Business operating assets can be placed into the C corporation or they can be left out with only the corporate checkbook as part of the corporation operating entity. Placing assets into the corporation is a non-taxable event but getting them out is not. For that reason, it is a general rule of thumb not to place land into the corporation. See your attorney and accountant for advice specific to your situation.

One additional point that applies to both S and C corporations. Shareholders have to maintain an employer-employee relationship with the corporation. If the shareholders maintain personal ownership of what they consider corporate assets, charge corporate business expense against those assets, are audited by the IRS, they may be denied those expense deductions because the assets were owned by the shareholders, not the corporation.

A corporation is established under state law. Each state permits corporations the right to do business. A corporation consists of owners who are called shareholders. The shareholders are the basic decision making group. They elect a board of directors to act for them on most operational decisions. Majority vote governs corporate decisions. Ownership of 51 percent or more of the stock gives you control. Minority shareholders have little if any decision making control unless permitted to do so by the majority shareholders.

Once a corporation is created, it functions much as a self-employed individual might. Corporations must establish their own name and bank accounts. The corporation can become an employer, a lessor or lessee, a buyer or seller, or engage in any other business activity.

Reasons why farms incorporate 

• It is easy to transfer shares. Shareholders can gift, sell or pass through an estate, shares to others as they see fit. A majority shareholder can transfer up to 49 percent of the outstanding shares without losing control of the business.
• A corporation may simplify estate settlement in that it may be easier to value shares than individual farming assets.
• Self-employment (SE) tax can sometimes be reduced with a corporate structure. Instead of paying SE tax on all the Schedule F income as a self-employed individual would, the farmer becomes an employee of the corporation and social security taxes are paid only on wages they receive. See your accountant.
• A portion of meals and lodging furnished to employees of a C corporation are generally deductible to the corporation, but not taxable income to the employee. If lodging is provided on the farm and is a condition of employment, the home’s depreciation, heat, electricity and interest become deductible to the corporation. Remember the employer-employee relationship issue.
• Fringe benefits are deductible by C corporations. Health, accident and up to $50,000 of term life insurance is deductible to the corporation, but not taxable to employees.
• The corporation offers perpetual life, some economic efficiencies regarding capital acquisition, and provides income and social security tax flexibility. It can also provide continuation of a farm business through several generations.

Potential concerns related to the corporation

• Getting into a corporation is generally a tax-free event. Getting out is a taxable event. Don’t start a corporation unless you plan to continue it for many years.
• If the C corporation is profitable but is not growing and acquiring new assets, it can be troubled with retained earnings or excess profits. This can result in a tax obligation.
• Corporations have a different set of rules. Corporate meetings, extra record keeping, corporate income tax returns, reporting requirements, and quarterly tax estimates are part of corporate life. Complying with extra legal and regulatory requirements cost time and money each year.
• Minority shareholders have no power in directing the corporate business and can be easily “frozen out.” A majority shareholder (farming heir) can direct that no dividends be paid. Minority (non-farm heirs), may own shares that generate no income, and hence have no practical value.
• Corporate ownership of a house eliminates the use of the exclusion of gain or a sale of personal residence.
• Corporate ownership sometimes reduces independence and individual pride of ownership.
• It can be very difficult for a retired shareholder to receive any retirement income from an operating corporation. This is especially true if the retiree has no rental property, discontinues working for the corporation, and the corporation pays no dividends.

The farm corporation can be a valuable tool in tax planning and in the transfer process. However, it is a major commitment and a complex task to start a farm corporation. Before starting a corporation, make sure it fits your goals, objectives and business personality.

Self-employment tax on land, buildings and facility rent regarding entities

The US Eight Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that if you are a member of any business entity (such as a partnership or corporation explained above); own land, buildings, or facilities that are outside that entity; and rent those items to the entity; the rental income is exempt for self-employment tax IF the rent is fair and reasonable.

This applies only to those states in the eighth circuit which include Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. With any of these laws, they are subject to change so seek legal advice on this matter.

Discounting business entity assets

An additional strategy that may be useful is the discounting of assets being placed into a business entity, such as any of the partnerships or corporations described earlier.

When you place business assets such as machinery or livestock into the business entity, you can elect to discount those assets. The main reason for discounting assets being placed into the business entity is to reduce the size of an estate in order to get below the federal and perhaps even the state estate applicable exclusion amounts. Doing so will reduce or eliminate any estate tax.

Justification for the discount is based upon lack of marketability of the assets due to a fractional ownership interest.

One disadvantage of discounting is that you have artificially lowered the basis of the assets in the entity. This can be a problem if the entity is discontinued and the assets are sold as a result. This could result in a tax obligation. If the assets are replaced due to use, this is not an issue.

Assets being discounted and placed into an entity should be appraised. If, at a future date, the entity is audited by the IRS, you can document the value of the assets placed into the entity. For machinery and equipment, simply take the depreciation schedule to the local implement or equipment dealer and ask them to put a value on all machinery. Have them put the values in writing on their dealership letterhead along with a signature and date. For livestock you can take a list to a livestock auction facility or someone who deals in livestock and would have a grasp of the values. The values should be put in writing and listed on their letterhead with a signature and date. For land, seek the help of a realtor who deals with ag land. Simply have them do an estimate or appraisal of the land, put it in writing on their letterhead, with a signature and date.

Note:  In late 2016, the Internal Revenue Service and the US Treasury Department enacted 2704 rules which drastically changed discounting rules and during which situations they may apply. If assets are transferred and then sold, discounting will definitely not apply.  If you are contemplating discounting any assets seek legal and accounting assistance to make sure you are in compliance with 2704 rules.

Business entities and maintaining homestead classification

When using a business entity for ag land ownership, caution must be used in order to maintain eligibility for the Minnesota Qualified Small Business Property Qualified Farm Business Property estate exclusion. In addition, utilizing limited liability companies (LLCs) as a business entity have new rules to comply with due to passage of the Minnesota Revised Uniform Limited Liability Company Act of 2015. The law states the land-owning LLC and its members must be the ones farming the land on behalf of the owner LLC. If the owner LLC rents the land to someone else, even another member of the LLC who then farms it personally, homestead classification is lost and therefore the qualified farm property estate exclusion is also lost. New LLCs must have complied with the new law as of August 1, 2015. Existing LLCs must have complied with the new law by January 1, 2018.

Ag land held in any trust, except a revocable living trust, as well as land in limited partnerships, limited liability limited partnerships, S and C corporations and LLCs must file documentation with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture under the Minnesota Corporate Farm Law in order to be eligible for the qualified farm property exclusion. The application must be done annually and there is a filing fee of $15 per application.

For more details on the Minnesota Homestead Classification requirements see maintaining farm land homestead classification and qualification . This is a complex area and there is a lot at stake regarding the qualified farm property estate exclusion so seek legal advice specific to your situation when establishing any entity that owns ag land.

Farm Service Agency (FSA) payments and business entities

Under the current farm bill, there are some restrictions regarding commodity program payments made to individuals versus entities. Entities that limit member’s liability exposure (all entities except the general partnership) are limited to one maximum payment limit regarding FSA commodity program payments.

This is a complicated issue. If you have any questions or concerns related to your situation, check with your FSA office for details of the program.

Caution: This publication is offered as educational information. It does not offer legal advice. If you have questions on this information, contact an attorney.

Gary Hachfeld, former Extension educator; David Bau, Extension educator and C. Robert Holcomb, Extension educator

Reviewed in 2017

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