Spring Cleaning Your Brain
So yes, I'm still alive. Finished my book and am recovering, slowly but surely. I find myself looking around my apartment and realizing some serious spring cleaning needs to happen here.
And the same thing happens when I look at my creative life. Need to clean it up, dust away the cob webs, and get my writing to feel fresh again. But how do we do that? Have you ever spring cleaned your brain?
I think my spring cleaning will include exercising 5 days a week (since this helps in a round-about way), starting a strict routine of finishing my writing in the morning before I look at email or the internet, and trying something different (either in my creative life or my day-to-day life) regularly to shake things up.
How about you? What kinds of things jumpstart your creativity?
posted by Jamie Sobrato @ 1:57 PM
6 Comments:
I take a complete break from writing...and usually wind up doing the spring cleaning! But, for an always differing segment of time, I don't write at all between stories. I'm in one of those phases right now. I might take an on-line class (am doing that), do writing promo stuff I normally don't have time to do (I don't count that as writing), tidy my desk and file away all the papers I've accumulated since the last project, clean the house, take my sister to dinner, etc. The next project's always working in my head somewhere, but I find I get too frustrated if I combine home improvement projects, for example, with writing, so I usually try to schedule those between projects. Except...right now I have a lot of painting to do and it's not warm enough yet to leave the windows open while I do it, so I guess I don't practice what I preach all the time. But I try.
Cindy
Congrats on finishing the book!! I just finished my RFH (revisions from hell) on the BFH (book from hell) and am kind of in the same boat. I need a break and I need to recapture some sort of enthusiasm over the thought of writing something new. I'm hoping to get that through reading. I've got 30 Blaze's in my TBR pile (your Lust Potion being one of them) and about 10 STs. Usually it only takes me about 3-4 before I'm dropping the books aching to write my own story (which explains why my TBR pile is so big).
Exercise is always a good thing. I do it every morning for an hour Mon-Fri and it helps both creative life and life in general. Probably because I spend all day taking care of boys and all night taking care of books, so my a.m. workouts are my only real "free" time...
It helps to be excited about a manuscript, too. I'm actually writing for procrastination purposes--putting off my extreme nausea over the inevitable GH disappointment soon to arrive. LOL At least I'll have a new book finished when that's all over!
Oh no, not the GH dread. I always strived to forget the GH was even approaching whenever I entered it. But that's nearly impossible, I know. Nowadays, the Rita is a lot less pressure and I don't worry about it, because Blazes just don't have much of a chance. I enter every year and look at it like entering the lottery. If I was a finalist, I'd be really happy, but also incredibly shocked.
Congratulations on finishing your revisions, Lori! I've been reading/listening to audiobooks a lot lately, and I agree it does help cure burn-out.
I'm happy to report that my brain is feeling spring-cleaned now...although my apartment, not so much. And I'm back to work happily. Whew.
Cindy, I did end up taking a week off from writing, and it helped.
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