As election season in the US ramps up, chaos continues around the world, and opening news and social media sites exposes you to a negatively incentivized firehose of information, what’s a creative to do?
These writers have Ideas.
21.37: Barrier Breaking: The World Is on Fire | Writing Excuses
“How do you continue to work? How do you survive? How do you be a person when everything around you is on fire without turning into the dog that says everything is fine?”
My day job involves a lot of news, so this is relevant for me. My usual approach is to try to write first thing in the morning, before I log on. It doesn’t always work but it helps.
(Let me say that elections and current events are important, obviously! I’m very much not recommending that you tune out completely, but I am saying that finding ways to give yourself some space for both creativity and news-related sanity is a good thing. Also, vote!)
While we’re at it, how can you translate your feelings onto the page in ways that help develop your characters and story?
21.39: Write What You Feel | Writing Excuses
The next time you’re actually experiencing a big emotion, this is how you can tell you’re a writer, is that you’re gonna sit there and go, can I use this? But think about like, what are your muscles doing?
What is your heart rate doing?
When you think back to that emotion, how does the temperature, that moment when the room is suddenly, you’re blazing hot or you’re suddenly cold, those people record those because that’s a thing you experience. How sensitive do you become to sound or touch or lights? What is your breath doing?
And then like your thoughts, what are you paying attention to? Do your thoughts feel smooth or are they skipping around? How is your memory attached to this?
I think all those somatic things are really, really wonderful.
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