Been awfully busy these days and as such, I have been majorly slacking on my blog. Honestly, I think blogs are past their prime at this point. With social media and texting more popular than ever, a regularly updated blog seems like a thing of the past. Or perhaps I’m just making excuses. Don’t worry (I know you were), I will still update mine when inspiration strikes, but I would anticipate the inactivity to remain fairly regular from here on out.
So, what brings me back? A whole smattering of things. Mainly juggling three projects. A completed one, one in the editing stage, and one still marinating in my head. A lot of these thoughts came from various forms of inspiration over the last couple years that I’m trying to work into a cohesive set of stories. They’re not related, but they are related? I guess you’ll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, I’ve been spending time with other people’s stories and trying my best to learn from them. What makes them work? What makes them fall apart? Why do people gravitate towards some topics but feel lukewarm about others? I’d say this time is well spent honing my craft even though I’m not necessarily actively engaging in a learning process. And I think it’s been helping. Not necessarily for my complete work, that’s said and done, for the most part. But for the story I’m revising and the one that’s still cooking, I’ve found myself adjusting the way I write to better reflect the lessons I’ve learned from others.
Indirect learning is a good thing and I think maybe it should be used more as a source for writerly advice than writers give it credit. Sure, there are great theories and guidelines for effective writing, I’ve shared some of those very same words of wisdom here from time to time, but since everyone’s journey is different, not every tool or approach works for us all. That’s where learning from enjoying other people’s work can factor in.
And so that’s what I’ve been doing with a lot of my time. It may sound irrelevant to my own process, but to each their own (as I said before). For me, taking the time to read, watch, and enjoy other art has been slowly building and perfecting my own methods behind the scenes so when I do sit down to write (which can be a challenge when there are three projects and zero time), all the inspiration comes out onto the fresh page.
Going forward, I’ll continue this method and continue writing my stories, too. Hopefully, in amongst all that, I’ll find a few moments to update this blog, too.
Happy writing!
Source: You Are What You Write
