How are you all doing out there?

Oh, you’re struggling? Yeah, me too. At least, I’m struggling to write this post. You see, this is the first post I’ve written for DIY MFA since the pandemic started, and when it goes live, we’ll probably still be under some level of quarantine. And I feel a sort of extra responsibility here, as the “wellness” writer for DIY MFA, to provide you with something that will help you address the struggle we’re all feeling. I’d like what I write here to give you solace, or make you laugh, or give you a bit of wisdom to chew on— or, if I’m honest, all three would be great. But here I am in the same boat, trying to keep my head above water. So I went out in search of my own solace/humor/wisdom, hoping for inspiration. 

Unfortunately, most of what I’m bumping up against in the writer-advice space is falling into one of two patterns. In one, the author says, “Hey, writing is hard right now. Maybe even impossible. Don’t beat yourself up; just give yourself time.” Which is great advice, and maybe what most people need to hear right now. Still, I’ve written posts like that in the past— I’m thinking of Writing Through Depression, which went live in the first week or two of quarantine (the relevance was completely unplanned), or How to Keep Writing When Times Are Tough. I don’t think I have anything more to share in that area. 

On the opposite end, I’m also reading posts that say, “Look at all this free time you now have! I’m going to help you manage it and create new habits out of thin air and by the time the quarantine is over, you’re going to have written a novel. Turn off Netflix and get to work, you lazy slob! What will you want to have accomplished when this is all over?” (Obviously, these authors are not speaking to people who are currently on the front lines of this pandemic or suddenly homeschooling their children.) Those posts can be helpful, but mostly they cause me shame. That question, “What will you want to have accomplished when this is all over?” is one I still haven’t been able to answer, and I wonder if anyone has. We’re still getting used to this revolution in lifestyle and how it’s impacted our inner creative worlds. Not to mention, I’ve written posts like that too, though not during a pandemic. Last fall’s series on WHY–WHAT–HOW of the writing process comes to mind. 

So, back to my dilemma: trying to give DIY MFA readers a useful post. Fortunately, a new book landed in my mailbox on the very first afternoon of the quarantine in my county: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell. This book provided me with the lens I needed to see my quarantine work differently, and hopefully do the same for you, my readers. 

The problem with the examples I gave above is that both types of posts are focused entirely on time. The “Don’t beat yourself up” type of post gives you permission to self-care instead of write. It allows you time in the longer sense: days, weeks, until you feel ready to resume your writing life. The contrasting “Get off your butt” post is also about time, but at a more micro level: hours, minutes, productive routines. But neither type of post serves us well, because what we really need to focus on isn’t time at all, which we have little control over. No one knows how long this time will last. But there’s one thing we can control, and focusing on it will help. It’s our attention. 

Where is your attention going these days? Where should it be going?

There are ways in which this pandemic is a curse, of course. We have been cut off from the lives we’ve built for ourselves. We have to stay away from loved ones and social spaces. A majority of our jobs are at risk or already gone. Fear pervades our every move; so little is certain. We are experiencing worldwide trauma.

But we can’t control any of those things. So is it worth giving our attention to them? What if instead, we attended to the ways that the quarantine is a gift? They are small ways, but meaningful. For example, most of us are getting more sleep, or at least are able to sleep according to a more natural schedule. We’re eating with our families. We’re cooking more. We’re learning to do more with less, and get creative with our resources. Most importantly, we’re reflecting on every element of our lives, because we’ve been forced to pause them. 

If we focus on what we’re giving our attention to, it’s easy to see how our mindset might shift. We can start doing the things that are most healthy for us— including figuring out the type of writing we can manage right now— instead of focusing on all the things we can’t control. We can figure out how to focus our attention on what matters, instead of trying to fit things that may or may not matter into the slots of our day. In How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell posits that attention should precede time, not the other way around. She writes, “Tiny spaces [in place and time] can open up small spaces, small spaces can open bigger spaces. If you can afford to pay a different kind of attention, you should.”

Our physical space is small. Time stretches into an uncertain future. But our attention has potential to change our lives for the better.

Well, readers, I hope I was able to give you something comforting and wise. I don’t think I made you laugh yet, though. So in closing, here’s my 7-year-old son’s current favorite joke: 

Q: What’s the difference between a piano and a tuna?

A: You can tuna piano, but you can’t piano a tuna!

Be well, Word Nerds! 

Leanne Sowul is an award-winning writer and music teacher whose work has appeared in such places as Rappahannock Review, Hippocampus, Mothers Always Write and Confrontation; her live readings include Read 650’s “Gratitude” show at Lincoln Center. As an elementary band director, Leanne can play every woodwind, brass and percussion instrument (just don’t give her a cello!) and has directed over two hundred student performances. She also coaches adults in the art of creative practice through her newsletter, The Joyful Creative. In 2017, Leanne won both the Scott Meyer Award for personal essay and the All-American Dream Champion Award for music teaching. Leanne lives with her husband and two children in the Hudson Valley. Connect with her at www.leannesowul.com.

The post The Power of Paying Attention appeared first on DIY MFA.

I’m one of those “write every day” writers. I believe that inspiration comes if I give it time and space to enter. I used to think that I could only call myself a Writer if I logged a certain number of hours every week, waking up early every day to make it happen. I prioritized time over energy.

But I recently realized that I’ve been ignoring something incredibly obvious and also incredibly important: putting a lot of time into writing doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m producing my best work.

So I reevaluated. I asked myself how I felt during each of my writing sessions in a week. Was I fully focused on the work, or did my mind start to wander? Did I get into a state of creative flow, or was I watching the clock? I noticed that my midweek morning sessions tended to be the most difficult. The obvious explanation was that I was tired. By midweek, I’d gone through at least two full days of teaching, plus the daily morning and evening chores and routines with my young children. I started to wonder if I might need a midweek break.

Internally, I rebelled against the very idea of a break. If writing was important to me, I should be doing it every single day, I told myself. My schedule was already so tight. How could I sacrifice even twenty minutes a week? It would just push my novel deadline further and my word count would sink.

But that midweek writing session continued to be my lowest earner. What would happen if I (gasp) slept in that morning instead of writing? According to Chris Bailey, author of The Productivity Project, it would be more productive for me to prioritize my energy over the total amount of hours I wrote in the week.

“If you want to become more productive, managing your time should take a backseat to how you manage your energy and attention.” — Chris Bailey, The Productivity Project

Bailey’s book convinced me to give a break a try, and it turned out to be an experiment that taught me a vital lesson about my writing process. But before I get to that story, I want to share with you the full extent of the debate going on in my head over time vs. energy, in hopes that it will prompt a similar examination of your own productivity.

Viewpoint #1: Time Is More Important Than Energy

Simple math is on the side of time. Time adds up, so the more time you put into something, the more valuable it is. Most important things in life take time, such as building relationships and growing a career. It makes sense that time should be the number one ingredient in writing a story, finding an audience and getting published.

Making time for something automatically flags it as important. We also each have a finite amount of time—there’s no getting around that 24/7, 168 hours a week rule—and that makes it more precious. The way we spend our daily and weekly hours adds up to the way we spend our lives.

Viewpoint #2: Energy Is More Important Than Time

If your brain is tired and you can’t focus, all the time in the world can’t help you create something beautiful. Conversely, if you have plenty of energy, cranking out thousands of words can feel almost effortless. Every writer has experienced both sides of that coin, and we all know which one we like better.

You can’t make more time. You can, however, foster your energy. You can invest in sleep, exercise, and healthy eating. You can meditate, practice mindfulness, and work to develop your focus. Energy makes the time you have more valuable.

The Verdict

After wrestling between these viewpoints, I decided it was worth giving Chris Bailey’s advice a try. The next week, I set my alarm later on Wednesday morning, so that I only had enough time for half of my normal writing routine. I admit, part of me felt disappointed in myself, as though I was being lazy. But when I saw the results, I felt better. Getting a little extra sleep when I needed it most turned out to be the best decision I could make both for myself and for my writing. My writing session that morning, though brief, was fast-paced and exciting. I also felt happier and more focused throughout the rest of the day. The benefits even spilled over to Thursday and Friday; it felt as though I’d given myself a mid-week reboot, which made Thursday and Friday seem more like Monday and Tuesday, typically my most productive days.

I went back to my energy vs. time face-off and came to a conclusion: energy has an edge over time. Time is important, but energy is vital to productivity. There is a tradeoff, however. Focusing on energy does take time. If you’re going to prioritize energy, you’ll have to put time into sleep, exercise, meditation, and seeking out healthier food. Ultimately, I found that all of those time investments were worth it to keep me writing productively and living happily.

DIY MFA readers, where do you land on energy vs. time? Do you think one is more important than the other? Here’s the litmus test: if you were given the choice to sleep in on a low-energy day, but it would mean missing a writing session, would you take it?

Leanne Sowul is a writer and teacher from the Hudson Valley region of New York. She’s the curator of the website Words From The Sowul and authors the “Be Well, Write Well” column for DIY MFA. She writes historical fiction and personal essay, for which she won the Scott Meyer Award in 2017; her work is represented by Suzie Townsend at New Leaf Literary Agency. Connect with her at leannesowul(at)gmail(dot)com, at Facebook.com/sowulwords, or on Twitter @sowulwords.

The post Energy V. Time: Let The Battle Begin! appeared first on DIY MFA.

This past year, I’ve dedicated a lot of time to experimenting with reflection. I’ve had reflective states last a day or a few hours. I’ve experienced them on road trips and at the library. At first I happened upon them by accident, but recently I’ve become more intentional with my reflective time, and this practice has rewarded me greatly. I’m excited to share what I’ve learned with you today.

Why Reflection?

Why reflect on the past if you’re looking to move forward? Just ask Terry Pratchett:

“If you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going.”

The past is the only place to look if we want to understand who we are: our habits, our wants and needs, and our tendencies. This is true when studying societal history as well as personal history. If you want to know who you are, look at where you came from. The past can reveal patterns in your behavior, and the behavior of others around you, that can aid you in identifying problems and potential solutions.

This is a vital part of the goal-setting process, because the first step to making an achievable goal is making it reasonable. And it’s not likely to be reasonable now if it hasn’t been reasonable in the past. Unless your life circumstances have drastically changed, you’re not going to start running every morning at five thirty if you’ve never enjoyed running before. It’s better to acknowledge that something just isn’t right for you so that you can find the things that do work for you. You might even be surprised by yourself if you look deep enough.

When to Reflect

Many people feel drawn toward reflection when a major calendar event is approaching (like New Year’s, or a birthday). But my most impactful reflections come when I’ve been feeling dissatisfied or stuck. Those two feelings perk my antennae and tell me to start preparing for my next reflective state. Are you feeling frustrated in an area—or two—of your life? You may benefit from setting aside time for reflection.

Preparing To Reflect

Reflection can be a difficult mental state to step into. Here are a few ways that I prepare for it:

• Stepping away from my biggest project for a few days to get some perspective.
• Leaving town, even just for the afternoon.
• Participating in a mindful activity, such as a walk in the park without headphones, or eating a meal without distractions.
• Journaling about what I want to accomplish during my reflection.
• Setting aside a length of time that I can be undisturbed.

How To Reflect

First, set yourself an intention for your reflection. Do you want to figure out how to get over writer’s block? Do you want to think of ways to inject creativity into your workday? Are you searching for ways to connect with friends? Try to hone in on the source of your dissatisfaction. I often have two or three things I’m grappling with.

Next, create the time and space, away from work or family, to think about them. You can journal or draw, you can talk out loud, or just let your mind dwell on the problem for a time. You can sit and meditate on it, or you can take a long walk. You don’t even have to be thinking about your intention directly; sometimes the best intuition comes when you allow your thoughts to run in the background while you pursue some other activity. Choose a method that speaks to your senses and personal learning style. Eventually, your thoughts will start to untangle themselves, and answers will emerge.

After Reflection

This is the part where you actually do something about the answers you’ve received, whether it’s setting a new goal, clearing something negative from your life, or confronting a problem. Reflective states should end with growth-oriented action. Decide on a few small steps that will help you move forward. Put them on your to-do list right away. Then encourage the process one step at a time until you’re living the life you envisioned during your reflective state.

How Reflection Worked for Me

Last spring I was feeling a great deal of overwhelm and stress from balancing work and home commitments. I was also dealing with the worst writer’s block I’d had in years, and struggling constantly against negative thought patterns. Those three things were deeply related, but it wasn’t until I forced myself to step back and reflect that I realized that I’d been attempting to fight one beast with three heads.

I took the whole day off from work and drove all the way to another state to purposely clear the way for reflective thoughts, and that gave me the breakthrough moment to help me bring all my problems under one umbrella and figure out how to move forward. Six months later, I’m in a much better place because I took that one day to reflect. I consider it the most important thing I did for myself in 2018.

I’d like to wish all of you a most wonderful 2019! If this column piques your curiosity and you have further thoughts or questions about reflections or the reflective mindset, please contact me via email (leannesowul[at]gmail[dot]com) or Facebook (Words From the Sowul). I’d love to discuss more with you.

Leanne Sowul is a writer and teacher from the Hudson Valley region of New York. She’s the curator of the website Words From The Sowul and the Perspective Post newsletter, and authors the “Be Well, Write Well” column for DIY MFA. She writes historical fiction and personal essay, for which she won the Scott Meyer Award in 2017; her work is represented by Suzie Townsend at New Leaf Literary Agency. Connect with her at leannesowul[at]gmail[dot]com, at Facebook.com/sowulwords, or on Twitter @sowulwords.

The post Forget Resolutions. Reflection Is The Key. appeared first on DIY MFA.

To some extent, I agree with the spirit of this advice. It’s standard math: there are only so many hours in the week, and if you’re going to devote many of them to writing, there will be less time for other things. But I object to the idea of making yourself into a hermit who says no to everything. The standard “say no” advice to writers misses the finer points of prioritizing and fine-tuning your schedule. We all fill our time, one way or another. If you’re saying yes to something, you’re saying no to something else. But do you have to say no to your relationships? There are other things you can let go of: watching TV, scrolling on your phone, doing chores.

People are always a good use of time. People enrich our lives. Healthy relationships keep us grounded. And people are also the best fodder for stories. You can’t write characters if you don’t observe real-world applications of character. It can be difficult to find time to deepen long-term relationships and nurture new ones. But in the long run, it’s worth it to find the time, even if it means adjusting your writing schedule occasionally.

I’ve found three methods that have helped me improve my real-world relationships without sacrificing my sacred writing time. Forgive me for the silly names!

Method One: Catch Up Over Ketchup

Certain chores are unavoidable, but they can be multi-tasked with quality social time. Next time you need to stock up on groceries, call a friend. You can wheel your carts down the aisle and catch up on your lives while you’re stocking up on ketchup (And hopefully some other food too!). It’s the errand date: the perfect solution to making an irritating chore enjoyable while getting face-to-face quality time with a friend (Twenty-first century alternative: order from Fresh Direct and invite your friend over for coffee while you wait for the delivery).

Method Two: We All Gotta Eat (And Clean)

My family has a Friday afternoon tradition. My parents come to my house and play with the kids after school while my husband and I do chores and get the house weekend-ready: vacuuming, laundry, unpacking backpacks and bags. Then we all share a pizza, relaxing in the knowledge that our work and home obligations have been settled for the week. Breaking bread together is one of the best ways to strengthen relationships, and you can’t say it’s taking time out of your writing life, because everyone has to eat.

Method Three: Call Me Definitely

Phone dates are the new meet-up. If you have a commute, they’re the best! Commuting is a form of unavoidable delay. You’ll be in the car anyway, so why not talk to a friend (Hands-free, of course)? I have two standing phone dates, one with my sister in California, and the other with my friend in Texas. I look forward to those commutes all week. There have been days so frantic that I felt as though that one conversation completely saved my sanity. It might take a bit of finagling to schedule something that works for both of you, but if you can make it happen, it’ll improve your relationships without taking away from your work time.

Have you read The Year of Yes by Shonda Rimes? She chose to say Yes to all the invitations she was given over the course of a year. She said Yes to social events, Yes to work opportunities, and Yes to herself (yes to eating healthy, yes to exercising) and still managed to write three of the hottest shows on television. If Shonda can do it, why can’t we?

We are writers. But we are more than that: we are daughters and sons, parents, brothers and sisters, spouses, partners, mentors and friends. We need to be wary of any advice that keeps us from being those things. Nurture your real life relationships, and your writing life will be better for it.

How have you kept your relationships strong without diminishing your commitment to writing?

Leanne Sowul is a writer and teacher from the Hudson Valley region of New York. She’s the curator of the website Words From The Sowul and authors the “Be Well, Write Well” column for DIY MFA. She writes historical fiction and personal essay, for which she won the Scott Meyer Award in 2017; her work is represented by Suzie Townsend at New Leaf Literary Agency. Connect with her at leannesowul(at)gmail(dot)com, at Facebook.com/sowulwords, or on Twitter @sowulwords.

The post Say Yes To Your Writing AND To Your Relationships appeared first on DIY MFA.

As a wellness influencer and writer, I have been grateful that the practices I learned to take care of a chronic illness helped me in my writing practice.  When I am well, I can write well. Here are a few of the best self-care habits that help in your writing practice.

1) Rest

Often the first thing we think when we read rest is “sleep.” While being well rested and getting the right sleep for your body is very important to your practice, so are other kinds of rest. Rest means doing things that fill you with joy and peace. It may mean a walk, reading a good book, coloring, or spending time with a good friend. When we are nourished, our entire life is positively impacted, including our writing. Don’t underestimate how that coffee date, taking a hike or reading that new novel might improve your writing practice.

2) Know when to walk away

When I have scheduled the time to write, I want to write and reach my goals. While I do believe showing up and working through resistance is essential, I have also found that surrender and knowing when to walk away is just as important. It might be as simple as a short walk or meditation when you are getting stuck before you come back to the page. It might mean a day away before you come back. Either way, one sure way to care for yourself is not only knowing when to show up but knowing when to walk away.

3) Share with a group

Writing groups are a powerful practice of accountability and sharing. One way to take great care of yourself is to build a community around you to share the highs and lows of writing with.  There is magic in sharing your experience with another and realizing that your challenges and your goals are similar. Being witnessed is a gift that you can only do in community, and that powerful process improves your writing.

4) Move your body

We all know physical activity is vital for our overall health, so in general, moving is helpful.  It is especially important to get up and move during long writing sessions. Just taking a short walk around the block can help unblock creative walls and inspire new, powerful words to come through.

5) Fill up on inspiration

Keeping a book or list of quotes that inspire you close by is a healthy way to encourage and empower our writing before, during or after.  Books like, Turning Pro or The War of Art by Steven Pressfield remind us when resistance is trying to stop the creative flow that we can push through.  It’s helpful to remember those that have gone before us and succeeded in the places we desire to go.

If I’ve learned anything from my health and writing, it is that habits take intentionality and practice.  We can try a new thing at a time and practice making it a new routine. Taking care of ourselves is a practice. It is important to start small and be gentle. Just like writing it takes showing up, practicing, and making modifications when we need them. Taking care of ourselves is a life-long journey, just as I hope your writing process will be.

Sera Fiana is a healthcare consultant and wellness influencer on a mission to use her passion for health to inspire healthy change from the inside out. As a 10 year survivor of a rare, abdominal desmoid tumor, Sera uses her life’s story of transforming physically, emotionally and spiritually on her healing journey to challenge the way we honor our personal health.  She is the founder of Healing U. Women’s Wellness, an educational community created to empower women who have experienced health challenges to transform their lives. Healing U. offers retreats, virtual programs and workshops.

Sera currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. Between passionately sharing her enthusiasm about wellness, you can find her sipping green tea while reading a good memoir, trying to write her own or hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The post #5onFri: Five Self Care Tips to Improve Your Writing Process appeared first on DIY MFA.

In order to capture this sense of time abundance, I’ve spent the past five weeks tracking my time. For every waking hour, I’ve documented my activities in half-hour blocks.

Since tracking time takes time (an interesting paradox), the very act of tracking time raises some immediate questions. Why did I do it? How did I accomplish it? And most importantly, after five weeks, what did I learn?

The Reason for Tracking Time

At first, I was adamantly against tracking my time. I believe in the aphorism, “You manage what you measure,” but in my case, measuring has always lead to the tightening of my habits. I was certain that tracking my time would have a similar effect to when I’ve tracked my calories or stressed over the daily word count on my novel: I would start by simply keeping track of the time, but then my tightening impulse would start demanding more and more from my time, just as I’d previously demanded that I eat fewer calories or write more words. I didn’t want that kind of stress, so every time someone mentioned using a timesheet, I balked.

But in June, I read Laura Vanderkam’s new book, Off The Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done, and it changed my perception of time-tracking. Instead of using time-tracking to shame myself into doing more with my hours, I realized I could use it to develop a healthier mindset about time. That was my goal when I began this project.

As a side perk, I liked the idea that I could look back on my summer and get an honest picture of what I’d done. I could see how many meals I’d cooked for my kids, how many evenings I had lounged around and eaten ice cream, and how many yoga classes I’d taken. I even documented vacation time, so I could look back and savor the memories later. It’s more accurate than a journal, because the memories aren’t filtered through emotion. It’s simply a list of things that happened.

The Method for Tracking Time

It’s very simple to track time using either a notebook or a downloaded online form. I used Google sheets. They have a template for time tracking by the half hour, and you can change the template easily if it’s not the correct range or if you’d like to add more values. I quickly realized that I could use it to track other things, so I created space above the first hour to write down my exercise for the day, my writing time and word count, and whether or not I’d meditated. It’s easy to create a new sheet for every week, and I can store them all in a folder on Google Drive so I can access them later.

(Note: If you use paper and pen, I’d suggest marking down the times by the half hour ahead of time, to make it easier to stick to the habit.)

Seven Lessons I Learned From Tracking My Time:

1) The stories I tell myself aren’t true.

I like to say, “I don’t watch TV,” when people ask me how I manage to read so many books. But my time tracking exposed the lie: I watch TV every single day. Often it’s while I’m doing other things, like folding laundry or eating a snack, but it’s still part of my life on a daily basis. If I didn’t watch TV, I could be doing even more reading than I am now. I’m not planning to make that shift, because I now have to confess that my story is a lie, and I do like watching TV. (You heard it here first.)

2) Life balances out.

Not every day is going to go perfectly, but enough things go as planned on enough days of the week to pick up any slack from unexpected problems. If I have a couple nights in a row of poor sleep, I make up for it later by going to bed early or waking up late on another day. If I miss an exercise session one morning, I may find myself taking a walk that afternoon to burn off extra energy. As long as I listen to my body’s needs, I find natural balance.

3) Almost nothing takes as much time as I think it does.

Consider this cell on my timesheet for Sunday, 8/5 from 8:00-8:30 PM: “Put daughter to bed, go into son’s room for talking and snuggling, help husband with garbage, do dinner dishes, text with sister, take out contacts and wash my face.” That was in the space of thirty minutes, on a Sunday evening after 8:00, which I generally perceive to be a low-energy point. Yet look at all I did in thirty minutes! Before tracking my time, I would have imagined that putting my kids to bed would fill the entire half hour. But I got a lot accomplished in the ten minutes at the end of that block, and—here’s the key— I didn’t even feel rushed.

4) I have more room in my schedule than I think.

At the start of the week, I look at all those empty cells and feel inspired by their potential. I know that many of them will get filled with obligations that aren’t under my control, but many of them will also be available to use for the things I truly want to do. It’s important for me to know what I want to accomplish, so that I can use those pockets of time in a way that satisfies me.

5) The way I spend my time reveals my true priorities.

My timesheet shows that I put my family first, because I spend a lot of time actively caring for my children and connecting with my husband, parents, and in-laws. However, it also shows that I take care of myself: I get enough sleep, I exercise, and I make time to read. I find it satisfying to know that my values are reflected in the way I spend my time.

I also found that I haven’t been actively writing as much as I thought I was. Aside from the timesheet, I’ve been using a time-tracking app running in the background on my laptop to calculate the number of minutes I spend on my journal, my novel, my blog posts and newsletters. It has helped to know the average amount of time I need to write 500 words of my novel and how long it takes to construct a newsletter from scratch. Tracking my writing time has taught me that I have no excuses for not completing my weekly and seasonal writing goals, because I can get so much accomplished in pockets of 20 minutes or less.

6) If I can’t make a daily habit, it’s good enough to have a weekly habit.

I’m a strong believer in habits. Creating a regular cue-routine-reward loop, as Charles Duhigg recommends in The Power of Habit, helps take the stress out of maintaining my health. But in a busy life, sometimes those habits can’t be daily. It’s enough to know that I’m doing something like meditation or skipping dessert most days of the week, even if it’s not every day.

7) Even an unproductive day has some productivity; even a super-productive day has some rest.

I had a really bad day toward the end of July. I stayed home all day, ate junk food, didn’t write or exercise. I was wallowing. In my mind, that day was unproductive. But even though I wasn’t pushing myself to do anything at all, I still managed to get meals on the table for my kids, do the laundry, play a game of Monopoly with my son, and spend 52 minutes writing an essay. If I hadn’t actually written it down, I never would have given myself credit for those things. My mind, influenced by my dark mood, would have told the story that I’d wasted the entire day.

On the flip side, even a super-productive day has some pockets of downtime. On a Monday in early August, though I was focused on doing a lot of writing, exercise and household chores, I still played with my kids and spent time reading.

Tracking my time has given me an invaluable perspective on life. I know whether the stories I tell about my life are true or false. I feel more flexible and open with my time. There are 168 hours in a week, and that feels so much more expansive than 24 hours in a day.

If you’re interested in tracking your time, go for it! You don’t need to do it for five weeks, as I did, or over three years, as Laura Vanderkam did. (She’s still going!) Even just one week will give you a new perspective on the way you spend your time.

Leanne Sowul is a writer and teacher from the Hudson Valley region of New York. She’s the curator of the website Words From The Sowul and authors the “Be Well, Write Well” column for DIY MFA. She writes historical fiction and personal essay, for which she won the Scott Meyer Award in 2017; her work is represented by Suzie Townsend at New Leaf Literary Agency. Connect with her at leannesowul(at)gmail(dot)com, at Facebook.com/sowulwords, or on Twitter @sowulwords.

The post Seven Life Lessons Learned From Tracking My Time appeared first on DIY MFA.

What does that mean for us as writers? It means that you and I have more years available to us than F. Scott Fitzgerald did, or William Shakespeare, or Jane Austen. We have more time to perfect our craft, more moments of creative thought, more experiences from which to draw inspiration.

Now, I’m not saying that we should cling to the mindset of endless time. We never know what might happen to our bodies or minds, and the drive or capability to create might one day leave us. But, just as an exercise, let’s try a thought experiment. What would it look like if we oriented our writing practice around the idea of having an entire century of time?

Would we take more breaks— even sabbaticals— from the writing life?

Would we give ourselves more time to gather inspiration?

Would the chatter of the world, telling us to “publish, publish, publish” start to fade into the background?

Here are some ways you might be able to benefit by telling yourself that you have an abundance of time.

Take the pressure off

We all cling to self-imposed goals. “I want to be published in a major magazine by the time I’m forty.” “I’m quitting unless I’ve gotten an agent in six months.” “I’m not a real writer unless I can complete NaNoWriMo.” Goals, while helpful in more predictable life situations, can be pressure cookers for creative work. They can lead to frustration and, in some cases, burnout.

Instead of giving yourself a goal that may or may not be realistic, focus on the incremental process of writing, and celebrate the days when you stick to your best practices. Take the pressure away from an outcome that may not be completely under your control. Remind the goal-oriented piece of your brain that you have an abundance of time. You may turn out to be more creative without the pressure of a deadline in place.

Lower the bar

If you have a whole lifetime to write, why not spread it out more? Lowering the bar for your daily or weekly writing habit might make you more consistent and less prone to burnout. Five hundred words a day doesn’t feel like much to someone who wants to publish next week. But five hundred words a day can result in ten personal essays in twenty days, or a full-length novel in 180 days. You can make the threshold even lower. I’ve heard of people who’ve written one paragraph a day, or even a sentence— it didn’t matter, as long as they stayed invested in their writing project. Does it really matter if you publish this year or next year? When you’re 95, will you care if you published your first book at age 39 or age 40?

(Maybe it does matter to you, and that’s okay too; remember, this is just a thought exercise to give us some perspective!)

Focus on quality

If you’re not focused on quantity, you can focus on quality. We often think that if we can’t devote a certain amount of time per day to our writing practice, we might as well give up. But you can still get a high quality result with a small amount of time— or a smaller number of words— when you’re truly focused. Remind yourself that a constant drip of water, precisely placed, can wear away stone.

Honor your reality

Think about this season in your life. Are you raising small children? Caring for older parents? Leaning in at your day job? Maybe you don’t have a lot of flexible time at this season in your life, but in ten years, you’ll be on the soccer sidelines with your writing notebook instead of literally kicking the ball back and forth with your three-year-old. Keeping the long term in perspective can help you see your current situation as temporary. How creative can you be with your time right now? Work within the framework of your reality, knowing that circumstances change over time.

Take a break— a real one

Have you ever thought about taking a sabbatical from writing? If you’re in a creative slump, or just want to try something new, it’s okay to take a few months off to pursue a different passion. Maybe you want to cook your way through a new cookbook, make a quilt, or focus on reading books instead of writing them. If you have a whole lifetime to spend and regenerate your creative energy, you don’t have to focus it completely on writing. Take a break— a real one— and come back to writing feeling refreshed.

I’m closing our mental experiment with one final thought. We don’t know that we’ll live until ninety nine, and it may be foolish to live based on that assumption. Perhaps feeling an abundance of time will condition us to allow time to slip through our fingers, leaving us unfulfilled at the end of our lives.

But it’s equally foolish to place a stranglehold on time, squeezing it so tightly that we don’t allow ourselves the space to truly live. Our perceptions of time must balance between abundance and scarcity, rigid schedules and relished relaxation, so that we can live our best lives on our terms, at our preferred tempo.

Interested in reading more about time perception? Stay tuned for the next Be Well, Write Well post, in which I’ll share my experiences tracking my time for an entire month.

Leanne Sowul is a writer and teacher from the Hudson Valley region of New York. She’s the curator of the website Words From The Sowul and authors the “Be Well, Write Well” column for DIY MFA. She writes historical fiction and personal essay, for which she won the Scott Meyer Award in 2017; her work is represented by Suzie Townsend at New Leaf Literary Agency. Connect with her at leannesowul(at)gmail(dot)com, at Facebook.com/sowulwords, or on Twitter @sowulwords.

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In the Fall of 2014, I went to a workshop at a local writers house on writing memoir. I thought it would be a fun Saturday afternoon activity to engage in. That workshop turned into a 2-year commitment to writing a memoir with a group of women embarking on the same journey.

It was healing to write about my journey with chronic health challenges, but as the weeks turned into years of writing, it turned out that the story was really more a story about addiction in my family and, ultimately, how my parent’s relationship impacted my life. While therapeutic, the writing process was also very emotionally challenging as it brought up so much surprise anger and grief.

What I learned from my journey, and that of the others in my writing class is the simple fact that I had to take care of myself to offer my experience as learning for others. Fortunately, the habits I learned to heal my body, on my health journey, also helped me to write my story.

A few tools I’ve learned to get to the authentic truth at the heart of an emotional story are:

1) First, Be Quiet

Before putting pen to paper, set a timer to be quiet. Three to five minutes is enough, but go  longer if you can and it feels right. Allow quiet to surround you and clear your mind. Mindfulness brings peace, stillness and clarity.

2) Journal Before You Write

Purge the negative mind chatter for a page (or 3) letting out whatever needs to release before you get to the work. Journalling allows you to honor and release what is caught up inside so you can get to the story.

3) Light A Candle

The peace and comfort of a flickering candle cannot be easily explained, but it works. Be sure to blow it out when you are done, signaling the work (for now) is done.

4) Bookend Writing

If you know you will be writing hard stuff in a session, consider beginning your writing time with a call to a friend letting them know you are writing for a few hours and ask if you can call when you are finished to “bookend” your work. Not only do you gain accountability, but there is comfort in knowing that someone will be there to talk with you when you’re done. Ironically, even if you just leave a voicemail at the end of your time, it can allow for release. This practice offers for a container of time specific for you to be vulnerable and open without having it spill over into the entire day (or week). You open and close with another person witnessing.

5) Move Your Body

Take walks, hikes, or runs to move the emotion through your body allowing it to release. Some days you may have to move more often or longer than others. The key isn’t the amount of time, it’s that you move. Allow physical release of emotions and give your body the gift of motion after all the sitting while writing.

The best self-care we can always give is loving who we are through the process, no matter what, and giving ourselves permission just to get the words on the page. Self-care takes intention and planning. Add it to your schedule, make it a habit, stick to it and most of all, be gentle.

Sera Fiana is a healthcare consultant and wellness leader on a mission to use her passion for health to inspire healthy change from the inside out. As a survivor of a rare, abdominal desmoid tumor, Sera uses her life’s story of transforming physically, emotionally and spiritually on her healing journey to challenge the way we honor our personal health.  She is the founder of Healing U. Women’s Wellness, an educational community created to empower women who have experienced health challenges to transform their lives. Healing U. offers retreats, virtual programs and workshops.

Sera currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. Between passionately sharing her enthusiasm about wellness, you can find her sipping green tea while reading a good memoir, trying to write her own or hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Follow Sera on Instagram at @serafiana.

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Anti-glare glasses will protect your vision, ergonomic keyboards will keep arthritis at bay, and lumbar support will straighten your spine, but there are a myriad of other body parts that contribute to your literary masterpiece. In order to craft the best book possible, keep a watch on these as well!

1) Ears

Whether you’re listening to the latest audiobook, your favorite Gabriela Pereira podcast episode, or a little music to set the mood as you write, you need to be thinking about the health of your ears. The intensity of a sound wave is measured in decibels (dB). Sounds below 85dB are considered safe while anything over 120dB can result in irreversible hearing damage in as little as an hour and 15 minutes. Due to the logarithmic way decibels are calculated, 120dB is not 120x louder than 1dB, it is 10¹² or over a billion times louder.

Just as your eyes need a break from the computer screen every 20 minutes, so too do your ears need a rest. Even low sounds played for an extended duration can wreck eardrums.  Take active steps to protect your hearing. Switch from earbuds to over-the-ear headphones; it can reduce sound by up to 9dB without sacrificing quality. Turning the volume down on phones, TVs, and stereos will avoid future damage so that you can keep typing away to your favorite jams without straining to hear them.

2) Feet

Everything that writing requires seems to be on the upper half of your body, so why think about something as far away as your feet? Sitting for long periods of time can result in swelling and numbness of the legs. If your chair is too high, it causes your feet to dangle, putting pressure on the back of the thighs, which inhibits blood flow and results in edema (swelling). This same pressure impinges nerve signals, causing the feeling of your limbs going to sleep.

Luckily, there are some simple steps (yes, pun totally intended) you can take to protect your tootsies. Adjust your chair so that your feet rest flat on the floor and don’t forget to get up and move every so often to promote good circulation. Whether you’re at your standing desk finishing that next chapter or rubbing elbows with literary giants at a writing conference, be sure to opt for practical footwear. Avoid the temptation to work at home barefoot, in socks only, or in unsupportive footwear like slippers. Foot pain can distract you from important tasks or put a damper on a fun event. Your shoes aren’t going to land you a book deal, but your ideas are. Keep yourself happy and free from foot pain.

3) Butt

This is a body part often taken for granted, but it’s probably one of the most important things we possess. If you’ve been noticing a little less shape to your derrière or you have pain in your butt and tailbone when you get up after a marathon of writing, you need to do something about it.

When you sit, the gluteal muscles are not engaged. The longer and more frequently you remain sitting, the lazier your muscles become and the less shape they hold. Prolonged sitting also tilts the hip flexors forward, exaggerating the flattened appearance of your butt.

It isn’t just the shape of your tush that suffers from long hours at your desk. The gluteus maximus, the largest muscle in the body, is responsible for holding your spine and core straight and keeping your hips level. If you lack strength in your butt, other muscles must compensate, resulting in low back, hip, or leg pain. The only way to counteract this is to exercise your butt and core regularly and maintain good posture as you sit.

4) Stomach

I have never been one to miss a meal, but every once in a while I tell myself I’ll eat something after this next paragraph and two hours later I still have not moved from my desk. Controlling your blood sugar and eating healthy foods at regular intervals is important for focus, energy, and overall health. A poor diet could be affecting your writing more than you know.

Although it is more common in diabetics, hypoglycemia, dangerously low blood sugar, can happen to anyone. Your brain consumes half of the body’s glucose; without this power source, you will experience nausea, anxiety, lightheadedness, shakiness, excess sweating, and mental confusion. We may playfully call this “being hangry,” but in fact, you are experiencing a serious medical issue. Writing requires focus and a steady hand to type. If you let your blood sugar spike or drop to dangerous levels, your novel will suffer for it.

5) Brain

Your mind is where the story begins, so keeping a healthy and well functioning brain is imperative to producing a good book. Alongside meditation and a nutritious diet, the best thing we can do for our brains is sleep. If you are a busy professional, parent, athlete, etc, you might be tempted to sacrifice sleep for a little more writing time. Don’t!

During periods of slow wave sleep, your brain increases activity. Memories, information, and ideas are absorbed and new electrical pathways are formed while the cobwebs are swept out and old pathways are broken. Quite literally, your brain is rewiring itself. Instead of wasting precious time puzzling over how to write yourself out of that plot hole, take a nap. You may find that your brain has formulated the perfect solution as you slept.

Being a good writer means also being a healthy one. Poor habits can result in mental cloudiness and physical pain, which can get in the way of any novelist’s dreams. Pay attention to your body and take care of yourself. Your book is counting on it.

Jeanette is a scuba diving instructor living in landlocked Dallas, TX. Oh… she also does freelance blogging and editing, makes a lot of dad jokes, creates web content, supports the oxford comma, and writes the occasional piece of fiction.

She is the editor of a career exploration guide available on Amazon and has a lot of files on her laptop that may one day be published. Until that happens, you can visit her #WordyWednesday blog for a mid-week word fact or look at pictures of her cats on Instagram and Facebook.

The post #5onFri: Five Ways Your Health Can Affect Your Writing appeared first on DIY MFA.

Lisa, thank you so much for being my guest on “Be Well, Write Well.” You’re days away from your book release date. With the added stress and excitement during this time, what’s one wellness-related habit you’re prioritizing, and why?

Getting away from the office/computer at somewhat regular intervals. A change of scene can replenish me even if it’s just a quick run to the grocery store (or, I must admit, to Nordstrom’s for a pair of fun summer sandals on a March snow day – not that I did that yesterday!). For many months leading up to the book launch, I’ve had a lengthy checklist, endless emails, plus all the normal work tasks. It can all be a bit much—and I’m a workaholic anyway. So simply getting out, having a conversation with someone who doesn’t even know what an advanced reading copy is, helps with the stress.

What is your usual writing routine? Does it change when you’re on a deadline, or when you’re nearing a book release?

I’m afraid I don’t have a “usual” routine, given that I have many different jobs—teaching online and in person, editing, coaching, speaking/presentations; writing time has to be flexible depending on the academic semester, client needs, travel, etc.

Deadlines are what saves me, always. They’re paramount, and if I’m given an open-ended assignment, I will insist on a deadline anyway! They provide a hard boundary and force me to be organized and plan well.

I suppose the only thing that’s usual about my writing routine—and what I advise students and coaching clients—is to write regularly no matter what. Sometimes that’s everyday, sometimes it’s twice a week. I do notice I get cranky and feel put-upon when I don’t write regularly.

This is my first solo book launch, and yes, everything seems to be affected by it, everything is a bit upside down—routines, the condition of my office, the muddled state of my brain! That’s a little unsettling and also very exciting. You only get to launch your first book once, so I’m trying to enjoy it amid the chaos and pressure to get so much pre-publication promo done.

What are your essential writing “tools?” Where do you write?

So lucky am I to have had an entire room of my own since 1990. I do love my home office, which I made-over five years ago, replacing hand-me-down beige office furniture with bright red walls, white trim, bold black (Ikea) bookshelves, and instead of a desk, an oversize dark wood dining room table. Recently I added a wing chair for reading and some additional lighting.

Yet I’ll write anywhere: in bed, at a café or library, on the couch very late into the night. For years, I wrote in the car waiting to pick up kids from school, in the bleachers at their games. If I could I’d always write in one of my favorite places of all—the lobby of any luxury hotel.

As for tools, my son recently convinced me to replace my clunky old computer with a sleek new one, which I do love, but I also like writing longhand in a plain spiral notebook with a Pentel liquid gel ink pen.

You’re a writing teacher and conference presenter as well as a writer. How do you manage the energy required to serve others in those capacities? How do you replenish your own creativity when you sit down to write?

See above, re: getting away from the office when possible! On a daily basis, I tend to toggle a lot, moving back and forth from one type of activity to another all day. That helps me stay alert and engaged and keep burnout at bay. I always have a long master to-do list and a shorter one for each day, and then on that short list, I assign things a number from one to three. Never more than three numbered items. After I do those three things, then I mark three additional things to do. While I need the long list, it can be stressful to contemplate. But I can always handle the idea of doing just three things.

That’s how I manage the non-writing-related, paid work. With two kids in college, that has to come first. As for my own creative writing, I must confess I’m not always good at prioritizing it, and I tend to think, “Let me just get X done first (X being some aspect of a paid project) and then…” We all know how that goes.

I plunge into the writing anytime there’s a hole in the work schedule. Lately I’ve gotten better at creating those holes myself—saying no to lower paying gigs, those that don’t interest me at all or come with red flags about how a client might be difficult, or projects that present impossible-to-fulfill expectations.

This is all true, but honestly the answer is, I often work six and seven days a week. Without traditional rules about weekends vs weekdays, I can spread out and get a lot done, period. Also, I don’t sleep a lot and I like to write late into the night.

I admire memoir writers for their willingness to be vulnerable by exposing their personal stories to the light. Have you ever experienced a writing block brought on by the need to be vulnerable in your work? How did you work through it?

I work through any of that right on the page, by constant revision and rewriting that lets me experiment with how much to tell and how to tell it, and—this is key in memoir—what to leave out. I go through a lot of drafts, and many of them represent different levels of revelation, various ways to make the story alive and meaningful for the reader while also taking in to account any need I may have to keep some things private.

If I decide to tell a particular story from my life, I don’t hold back on the page. I want to tell it in a way that’s full and satisfying, and you can’t do that if you’re hedging or hiding. Perhaps getting older helps with that: after a certain age, I found I didn’t give a damn what anyone outside my family thinks. And I get unequivocal support from my husband and (now adult) kids on that.

And finally, which books, blogs or podcasts would you recommend to writers who are eager to develop strong writing and wellness habits?

Any of Laraine Herring’s books that combine writing craft advice with self-mind-body awareness: Writing Begins with the Breath; The Writing Warrior; and her newest, On Being Stuck. They’ve sustained me well at various times.

I adore Cynthia Newberry Martin’s Catching Days blog, especially the “How We Spend Our Days” series. I like any blog or website where I can a peek into a writer’s day. It helps to see that other writers aren’t always on the top of their game either, and that they too also struggle to make writing and life fit together.

Lisa Romeo is the author of Starting with Goodbye: A Daughter’s Memoir of Love after Loss, (University of Nevada Press, May 1, 2018). Her work is listed in Best American Essays 2016 and published in literary and popular media, including the New York Times, O The Oprah Magazine, Brevity, Under the Sun, Full Grown People, and many other places. Lisa teaches in the Bay Path University’s MFA program. A former equestrian journalist, she holds an MFA from Stonecoast (University of Southern Maine), and a BS in journalism from Newhouse (Syracuse University). Lisa lives in New Jersey with her husband and sons.

Leanne Sowul is a writer and music teacher from the Hudson Valley region of New York. Her work has been published in such places as Confrontation, Hippocampus Magazine, Mothers Always Write, and Hudson Valley Magazine; in 2017, she won the Scott Meyer Award for outstanding personal essay. Leanne is the curator of the website Words From The Sowul and authors the “Be Well, Write Well” column for DIY MFA. Her historical novels are represented by Suzie Townsend at New Leaf Literary Agency. Connect with her at leannesowul(at)gmail(dot)com, at Facebook.com/sowulwords, or on Twitter @sowulwords.

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