The Write Practice

A few years ago I taught at a high school with a strong Arts program. At the end of the school year, the fruits of students’ labour were put up for sale in a silent auction. I remember walking through the room, mouth agape and eyes bulging in awe of the talent I saw.

Later in the staff room a colleague and I, both of us English teachers, both aspiring authors, were fawning over the accomplishments of our students and I remember saying, “I wish I had talent like that.” My colleague assured me that I did. When I protested that I couldn’t even draw a wiggly line, she said to me, “You’re an artist; you paint word pictures.”

It was a moment of epiphany, one that’s stayed with me to this day.

The day Marston was born, we found out my wife’s grandmother had cancer. They said she had six months to a year to live. Three weeks later, she was in critical condition, and my wife was flying up to see her. It’s now four weeks after my son was born and I’m here in Pennsylvania, Amish country, for the funeral.

Never before have I seen life and death in such close proximity. Cormac McCarthy once said these are the only two subjects worth writing about, life and death. After experiencing it first hand this month, I get it.

Are you using photographs as a tool in your writing? No matter how good your imagination may be, looking at the setting, the character or the mood you’re describing can only enhance the task at hand. A nicely taken portrait can reveal much about the character – his/her vulnerabilities, moralities, moods and feelings, origins – and suggest a story behind it. By looking into the eyes of a photographed subject, you’re looking into this person’s soul. You, as a writer, are to catch this and put it into your art: words.

I recently presented a paper on how creative writing exercises appear to be useful in the foreign language learning classroom. My findings were surprising. I found that writing stories can help language learners become better language users and, concurrently, allow them to become better creative writers.

I get asked this question from readers several times a week, “How do you write when you don’t feel like it?”

It’s frustrating, right? One day you’re passionate about writing. You’re in the zone. Words come easily without much effort.

And then something happens.

You skip a day. And then two. A week goes by and you haven’t written a paragraph.

You feel guilty, like you should be taking your writing more seriously, but you just can’t muster the willpower to actually write.

Have you ever felt like this? I know I have. In this article, we’ll talk about why you don’t feel like writing and what you can do about it.