Tag: Writing

Journal writing – a simple practice that will make you the writer you want to become.

Neera

Writing is a challenge even for the best of the writers. For beginners, the undertaking is so daunting that most of them give up after a few tries. When the first novel or a bunch of short stories or hastily written poems don’t bring them either the satisfaction or the accolade they were looking for, they give up; without realizing that they could have kept their dream alive by doing one single practice.

Journal writing.

Journal writing is one simple tool that can make you an eloquent writer, a clear thinker and a much better human being.

What is a journal, anyway?

A journal is a place where you record your observations, insights, memories, impressions, and feelings. It is a keeper of your secrets and holder of your dreams and hopes. It is a whiteboard where you analyze stuff and make plans. It is a safe haven to vent your anger and share your hurts.

The simple practice of journal writing, if pursued faithfully, can make you the writer you want to become. Whether you write fiction, nonfiction, blog or business documents, you will find that the practice of keeping a journal makes you a much better writer.

Journal writing has been around for centuries. It is a practice adopted by the old and new writers alike.

Many prolific writers were journal-writers. Rainer Maris Rilke, Virginia Wolf, Whinston Churchill, Louis XiV, Henry David Thoreau, Carl Jung, Anais Nin, and Susan Sontag became the writers they are through the practice of keeping journals.

This is how Anne Frank started, at age thirteen, with the following words in The Diary of a Young Girl.

Thirteen years old Anne went on to become the most famous journal writer in the world even though her life was tragically cut short only a few years after she wrote those words.

If you have too many obstacles in the way to follow your dream, then do just one thing, keep a journal. Here are ten ways a journal will help you become a writer.

1. Journal writing will keep your writing dream alive

Twenty years ago, when I felt an urge to write, I couldn’t even put a decent sentence together. Having not written anything other than a bunch of letters I had no expertise in writing. Out of sheer luck, I picked up an old diary and started writing.

My first entry was a letter to my husband. I wrote on-and-off for a few years, gradually increasing the frequency to weekends and whenever life threw lemons at me. Little by little the urge to write took hold of me so much that any day I don’t write doesn’t feel like the day I have lived.

Journal writing, more than anything else, kept the dream of becoming a writer alive for me. All through the years while I was busy with work, home, raising children and parenting the parents, the only writing I was doing was in the journals. But this simple act made me a much better writer than I was before. I am a full-time writer now. It wouldn’t have been possible without the practice of journal writing.

2. Journal writing helps you become a better writer

When I started writing I had a very limited vocabulary. My writing expression was plain and I didn’t know a lot about literary devices and my knowledge of fiction and non-fiction writing was next to nil. All I had was a desire to write.

My journal became my teacher. I wrote in it whichever way it came, never editing, never trying to improve anything. For the first couple of years, I wrote with a pencil rather than a pen so that I could erase whatever I didn’t like but I don’t remember using it much. It was just there for comfort.

As I wrote I got better and better at it. My vocabulary increased and my sentences improved.

Journal writing provides you with a safe environment to practice. No one is going to read your journals. They are for you and you only. You can write in it whichever way it comes. Broken sentences, random rants, off-tangent remarks, unfinished poems, mundane stories – everything is acceptable.

In journal writing, it is not the outcome but the practice that matters.

3. Journal writing will bring out what lies buried deep inside you

A journal is a place where you can write intimately, truthfully, and without any constraint. No one is going to read what you write. You are writing for yourself.

It is also a very effective tool to bring out to surface what is buried deep inside you. When you write in a journal you inevitably return to the center of your being. A journal becomes a trusted companion to whom you can tell everything without the fear of being judged.

On the surface everything was fine, but deep down I knew something was wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it and the nagging feeling wouldn’t go away. I went through the day, distracted, a part of my brain continuously trying to figure out the problem.

Finally, when the day was over, all the chores done, I sat in my bed and opened up to my journal. Layer by layer I started peeling off the ambiguity. One by one, I recounted all the reasons. Every pent up emotion came out. Raw and fierce.

At times I went off the tangent, but it didn’t matter. In about half an hour I started feeling better as if there was weight on my chest and it has been lifted. I could breathe normally now.

The problem was still there but I had dissected it. It was not a huge monster any more. It lay there in tiny pieces and I was not afraid of it any longer. I knew solution will come to me sometime in future. I closed my journal and drifted off to sleep.

An excerpt from my journal

Journal writing teaches reflection and brings focus. It gives you room to know yourself in depth.

4. Journal writing will help you know yourself

Writing in a journal helps you self-examine. It is a supreme way to record your thoughts and to understand your own thinking process.

The patterns of your thinking, emotions, and actions start becoming evident very early in the process of journal writing.

Unfolding these patterns can empower you to see what you are giving time and attention to; where your thoughts are taking you; what emotions accompany your thoughts; what insights are there and what changes are needed.

Self-awareness brings acceptance and widens our perceptions. The less aware we are about ourselves the more closed and restraint we become. The more secure we feel about ourselves, the easier it is to open up to what’s around us, including to other people’s views and experiences. Journal writing supports this.

5. Journal writing will help you become an observer

Journal writing will train and hone your eye for beauty. It will invite you into the present moment while also allowing you to roam your past. It will open you to experience awe and wonder. It will let you intensify and renew your pleasure in events and situations that have gone well. It will support your recovery and the gaining of wisdom from the times you wish had never happened.

The habit of journal writing creates the most interesting distance between you and your thoughts. Your feelings change when you write your thoughts down and you are able to change your perspective. Experiencing your own powers of observation, coupled with a greater awareness that you have choices, increases your sense of self-mastery and inner stability.

As your journal writing continues, this means that you become not only an acute observer of your own life but also an acute observer of life itself.

6. Journal writing will help you understand the world around you

Journal writing is a supremely effective way to engage more intimately with the world that is all around you.

It will help you become less judgemental and critical of other people and generally less judgemental and more supportive of yourself.

Journal writing is a self-directed source of inner development, yet it also makes the world beyond your own self more real and more vivid. It can be an interface between you and the outside world.

The change might take place at a glacial speed, but you will find out that your writing will become less and less about yourself and more and more about the outside world even if it is about the palm tree outside your window or the birds chatting to each other.

7. Journal writing makes you an original writer

Only you can write your journal. Only you know most about yourself. And only you have your own perspective. When you write in your journals you are not imitating or copying. You are just being you. In your journals, you find your voice.

The freshness that comes from writing a journal permeates your life.

It is impossible to write a journal consistently and not become more reflective, insightful, and original in your writing.

8. Journal writing helps you silence your inner critic

Journal writing is all about process – not goals or outcomes. It is freeing – not constraining. Journal is the place where you can retire the inner critic. How you write, what you write, matter only to you. You are writing to please yourself, no one else.

Sometimes when I read my old notebooks I get drawn into them like a novel. I almost forget that I have written it. Some insights are so profound that I stop and wonder where that came from. All negativity about my writing ability vanishes and a sense of acceptance of my own abilities surfaces.

Journal is a thinking place, where you are least inhibited. Many writers use journals as the place to develop ideas or reflect on their intellectual work in progress.

It can be a place of discovery, learning, emotional relief, and insight. It can also be a playground, where the everyday rules of writing, reflecting, problem-solving, goal-setting, production, and planning no longer apply.

9. Your journals are the containers for your stories

An empty page in your journal is an invitation.

It is a place to collect your stories. A perfect repository of your anecdotes. This is where you describe things that can’t be captured in pictures. Like your home, what it means for you, how it functions and what comfort it brings you.

In your journals your practice noticing and capturing details to make your writing intense. Through your journal, you learn to see the world in more vivid colors. Widen your vision. Excite your senses.

I was hanging clothes on the clothesline when I took off a pair of socks I had already hung and straightened them by pressing them between the palms of my hands. Then I put them up again my cheeks to feel their texture. I hanged them up again, this time slowly and nicely so that when they dry I can fold them the way Marie Kondo suggested. It was then the realization struck me – I now have time to thank my socks. I laughed when I read that suggestion in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying. Now I just did that.

Excerpt from my journal

These stories make perfect reading for rocking-chair days.

Journal writing is a supremely effective way to engage with your own inner world – and to engage more intimately and confidently with the world that is all around you.

10. Your journals itself will become your writing

Over time your journals will become your life’s work, something more precious, truthful, and rich than any book you can write. Many journal writers have left their journals as their legacy. Anais Nin made an art form out of her journal writing. She left behind 150 volumes (about 150,000 pages) many of which got published in her life making her a feminist icon of the sixties.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing or sing in writing then don’t write because our culture has no use for it.

Anais Nin

Start a journal you don’t have one, and for the love of writing keep going if you already have one.

Photo by Essentialiving on Unsplash

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Why have a platform?

Neera 1 Comment

Dear Creative Souls,

I have been writing for twenty years now. In those years, I have filled countless diaries, notebooks, digital files, and online apps. I was writing for myself and never thought of publishing anything.

As I got a bit better at writing, a tiny desire to share some of my writings with others started lifting its head.

But I am too scared to send any of my short stories to the competition. My novel needs at least three for four serious rewrites, and my diaries are personal. What can I share?

That is when I came across Austin Kleon’s book Show Your Work in which he describes the importance of having a platform.

A platform is a medium through which you share your ideas and your work. It can be physical (a gallery, a salon…) or digital (blog, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook…), although in today’s age digital is preferred because of its reach and affordability.

Austin wrote:

More than ten years ago, I staked my own little Intrnet claim and bought the domain name austinkleon.com. I was a complete ameture with no skills when I began building my website: It started off bare bones and ugly. Eventually, I figured out how to install a blog, and that changed everything. A blog is an ideal machine to turn the flow into stock. One post is nothing on its own. Publish a thousand posts in a decade and it turns out into your life’s work.

[…]

My books, my art shows, my speaking gigs, some of my best friendships – they all exists because I have a my own little piece of turf on the internet.

That advice was the inspiration for the start of this blog. Since last year, I started sharing my work and my learnings on this blog. It has completely changed my perspective on my craft. I am writing better, learning faster and feeling a sense of accomplishment I never felt before.

If you are really interested in sharing your work and expressing yourself nothing beats owning your own space online, a place that you control, a place that no one can take away from you, a place where people can always find you.

Carving out a space for yourself online, somewhere where you can express yourself and share your work is still one of the best possible investments you can make with your time.

Andy Baio, a technologist and blogger. 

Your blog can be your sketchbook, your studio, your gallery, your storefront, and your salon.

It is like a shopfront.

It will be a place where you can be yourself. You can reveal the part of you which not even your family knows about. Your secret yearnings, your desires, your dreams.

Don’t think of it as a self-promoting machine, think of it as a self-invention machine. Online you can become a person you really wanted to be. Fill your website with your work and your ideas and stuff you care about. Social media trends will come and go but blog and email have been around since the beginning of the internet and are here to stay.

[…]

Over years you will be tempted to abandon it for the newest, shiniest, social network. Don’t give in. Don’t let it fall into neglect. Think about it for the long term. Stick with it, maintain it and let it change it with you over time. Whether people show up or they don’t, you’re out there, doing your thing, ready whenever they are.

Austin Kleon

Blogging is a simple strategy that the new age creatives use to build a name for themselves which overtime becomes their most valuable asset.

This kind of blogging is different from professional blogging where you are wanting to earn money from blogging. It is more in line with the advice the great writer and visual artist William Burroughs gave to Patti Smith, a singer, songwriter, musician, author, and poet

Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises. Don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work… and if you can build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency.

William Burroughs

I am not sure whether you have given it a thought or not yet but you need a platform too. Every creative person does.

Let me know when you build one. I would love to visit it.

Photo by Matthias Wagner on Unsplash

7 habits of successful writers and how I built them

Neera

It is your dream to become a successful writer. You have been harboring the desire for a long time. You have been setting daily writing goals. You have been attending writing workshops. You have been scribbling here and there. You started writing a book five years ago and you keep promising yourself that one day you will finish it. One day, when the kids are out of the house, when work is less demanding, when you retire, when all the stars are aligned, you will become a successful writer.

If these thoughts resonate with you, you are not alone. This is what I used to think too.

This was until I really sat down and had a good look at what successful writers were doing that I need to do as well in order to be as productive as them.

Here are the seven habits I identified and adopted which remarkably increased my productivity.

1. Don’t just set goals, build habits

Years ago I was setting goals to write a certain number of words every day but failing at it miserably. Something always happened to consume my time and energy. I even used an online app 750Words where people write for years at stretch but I was not able to maintain my streak. I was averaging twenty days a month. I have participated in National Novel Writing Month multiple times and won three times writing 50,000 words followed by months of no writing.

My writing pattern matched my exercise routine and I knew I needed to fix both. Surprisingly it was by fixing my exercise routine I was able to fix my writing.

Almost two years ago I started going to the gym every weekday. I set a time for it, 5:30 pm. This took the decision process out. By the time it was five pm, my mind would start reminding me. I always kept the gym bag ready in my car. When I did that a few weeks, all my resistance melted. Like any gym junkie knows that you always feel good after exercise (because of endorphins release). The habit brought a surprise benefit – I started looking forward to going to the gym. I even made friends there. They would ask me if they didn’t see me at my regular time. Another surprise benefit – my stamina increased and exercise became easier.

I did the same for writing. I bought a journal with 365 pages and started writing a page a day, no matter what. A page fitted roughly 250 words. If I didn’t fill the page it didn’t matter. As long as I wrote something there I had fulfilled my pledge. I did that every morning without fail. If for some reason I missed the morning, I did it at night.

Writing a page a day is a habit now. The day I don’t write doesn’t feel like the day I have lived. With time my stamina increased. I write close to 1000 words a day.

2. Understand writing is a three-step process

When I was a newbie writer, I thought that as would I move my hand on the page or punch the keyboard, beautiful writing will emerge on the other end. Something that could go straight in a book. I called it publish-worthy material.

We all know it doesn’t happen that way.

Most of the people give up their dream of becoming a writer at this stage because the magic fairy didn’t move her wand over their fingers.

But those of us who stick around, we find a magic formula. That magic formula is – writing is a three-step process – Idea generation, drafting, and editing. As my mentor, Jeff Goins says, “Think of them as three buckets. Make sure you add something to each bucket each day.“

Keep a notebook just to capture ideas. Ideas will come all day, without any effort on your part. Your job is to capture them in the idea notebook. Then pick one and write it and put it aside. It is called drafting. You will never be in a position when you have time to write and can’t think of anything. And when you have something already written, it is very easy to fix it and make it publish-worthy.

And this is what I do now and it works like magic.

3. Manage your time

I thought when I don’t have to go to work, I will have eight hours extra in my day. I will be able to devote all of that to writing and even the commute time and time wasted on getting ready for work. Within a month I realized how wrong I was. So many things are fighting for our time. Housework never ends. My house is still as messy as it was when I was working full time.

“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have 24-hour days.” – Zig Zigler

Two things I observed. One, work expands to the time available (Parkinson’s Law). Second, I only get blocks of time available for writing. I started using those blocks most effectively. To learn more about those read my post Use 90-minute bock technique to get more out of your day.

4. Become a smart reader

Writers are avid readers. Sometimes our writing suffers because of reading but sometimes our reading suffers because of writing. Recently I was not getting enough time to read so I went on to find ways to include more reading in my schedule.

I used Pierre Bayard’s method (How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read), to select which books I wanted really read, re-read, refer to, skim, and never wanted to open (read my post So many books, so little time). Using the system, I got rid of several books and prioritized the rest. Then I chose five strategies to get more reading done – set a dedicated reading time, read at least 20 pages a day, sprint reading at times, subscribe to audiobooks,  and quit reading early if I don’t like a book.

5. Show your work

I have been writing on and off for twenty years. I have boxes full of notebooks and countless files on the computer of my writing. But none of it was any good. Why? Because I was not revising it and making it worth sharing. It was only when I started writing for this blog that I started growing as a writer.

Showing your work, even if it is on a blog, makes you a better writer. Because now you are writing publish-worthy material. If you are serious about your writing, start a blog in a quiet corner of the internet and start sharing your writing with an audience. Even if you don’t want an audience you can publish for yourself. No one will find your blog unless you actually tell anybody. The notion that someone might read it will make you work harder.

6. Have multiple pieces of work in the pipeline

For years I was working on one novel. I wanted to focus all my energy on it. No distractions, I would tell myself. But the novel didn’t go far. I ran out of ideas. In fact, I got sick of it. I parked it aside and started writing short stories. Some I was able to finish, others just wouldn’t go anywhere. Then I started a non-fiction book. Last year I got into blogging.

All this time my novel was incubating in my head. Suddenly the whole story became crystal clear. Now I am able to go back to it and finish it. The same thing happened with some of the unfinished short stories.

Successful writers never stop at one book. They might be concentrating on one at a time but they have several in the pipeline.

7. Understand the higher purpose behind your writing

Most people dread writing, consequently, they won’t write even if their lives depended on it. Yet some of us find our calling in writing. I believe if some higher power has selected us to write, it will also give us the aptitude to write well.

One of my writing teachers used to say, “Writing is receiving.” That was why at the beginning of each session she would make us sit quietly and write. An act to receive with gratitude whatever we were given.

Our job as a writer to write, keeping in mind the teachings of The Bhagavad-Gita, “Do your labor without expecting the fruit of your labor. Labor is in your control, the fruit is in the control of the higher power. It will decide when to bring the fruit of your labor.

Want more?

Here is a related article worth reading 21 Productivity Hacks from 21 Prolific Writers.

What writing habits have you been able to develop? Share them here with other readers of the blog.

Photo by Kat Stokes on Unsplash

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Finding a writing voice

Neera 2 Comments

Who am I? What is my message? What is my writing voice?

I had never thought I would be pondering these questions in a blogging course, yet here I am. In the last two days, I went through an unexpected self-discovery journey which is worth sharing here.

When I started this blog I picked two topics I was most passionate about – writing and creativity – and started writing about them. Then I went traveling and travel writing got added to the mix. I am still extremely passionate about these topics I am not sure where they are taking my blog.

Am I confusing my readers? Are all my readers interested in all the topics I am writing about? I know some of my readers are reading just the travel articles and other only creativity or writing tips.

In comes the blogging course Intentional Blogging by Jeff Goins.

The first thing that strikes me in the course is that blogging is not about picking the right topic and writing about them but about finding your voice.

Your writing voice is your unique way of sharing whatever it is that you’re going to say. It’s your particular perspective. It’s the way that you view the world.

There are three aspects of a powerful writing voice. It is distinct, it is attractive and it is personal.

Jeff Goins

How to find your writing voice?

Jeff has a three-word exercise to find writing voice to be done in three steps.

“First, review a piece of your own writing and describe it in three words, or short phrases, but try to use adjectives such as funny, smart, and super-cool.”

Okay.

“Second, select at least five of your favorite writers and list three words to describe their writing voice. This will indicate the kind of voice you like, read and engage with.”

Done.

“Third, ask five of your readers to describe you in three words or phrases.”

Not too much to ask on the surface.

But when I put the question to my father-in-law, first-ever reader of my blog, he had to go for a walk to think about it.

My devoted, encouraging lawyer-daughter wanted to know the purpose of the question. “It’s to determine what my readers would want to read?” I offer.

“That is a wrong approach,” she cried, “You can’t ask us what we want to read. It is up to you. You should write what you want to write about.”

“Yes, but it will help me find my writing voice.”

“I like what you are writing,” she said.

“But it is too broad. I need to narrow it down. I probably need to drop travel writing.”

“But you are traveling. You should write about your travels. Some of your best writing is travel writing. I like your post Words are better than 1000 pictures. I love the anecdotes there.”

In a roundabout way, she told me she wanted me to include anecdotes in my writing. Like the everyday stories post, I wrote earlier also Aunt Grace’s Philosophy, A story that will touch your heart, Evoke the senses with your writing, only that she wanted to write my stories, not other people’s stories.

“I don’t have a word for it,” said my son-in-law, “but you say in your writing you did such-and-such and you found so-and-so.”

“Learnings that it. Life’s learnings.”

“Your writing is not preachy but informational. Information based on personal experience” chimed in my husband.

“Insights, is the word.” said, my daughter.

“Seeker, courage-of-conviction and go-getter” declared my father-in-law, the three phrases he thought during his walk.

“Diligent, creative and consistent,” said my brother.

How finding my writing voice exercise led to important discoveries

At night I sat quietly and looked back at the arc of my life, from a child to a young woman to an aging adult. I was surprised at all the transitions I have gone through. First I was who I was. Then I didn’t know who I was. Then I became what everyone around me wanted me to become. Then I invented someone I really wanted to be and became that. And finally, I am what I am again.

It is a privilege to be my own person.

When we are young we don’t know what we are. As we go through life we learn about love, about marriage, about betrayal, about failing, about falling and getting up again, about work, about staggering towards success, about raising children, about caring for the aging parents, about what matters to us and to the world around us.

And when we get towards the end of life we learn who we are.

“Life must be lived forward but understood backward.”

Soren Kierkegaard

It is interesting to note that most of our learning happens not in a classroom or in a library but in the school of life. We can look back and identify the moments – the friends’ betrayal, the work promotion, the careless comments, the difficult forgiveness, the silence, the debates, the hurt. All these things shape us, make us the person we become and give us the wisdom to share.

Two discoveries:

  1. We learn about life in retrospect.
  2. The wisdom of everyday life is timeless and worth sharing.

My daughter was right. It is the anecdotes that capture the essence of my writing voice. My father-in-law was right too, I am a life-long seeker. Seeker of answers, seeker of knowledge, seeker of wisdom. My son-in-law pointed out another one of my traits, learnings from trial and error. And my husband said the evident – I am not a preacher. I just say my truth.

This exercise has changed the focus of my blog from a topic-based blog to a personal blog. I have discovered I have so much more to share now. My passions give me a unique perspective on life, my seeking, learning, and insights give my writing voice a distinct flavor that hopefully will attract the right audience.

“Curious, insightful and inspirational.” I wrote down on the course notes and went to sleep.

Almost there…

Neera

Now that NaNoWriMo is close to finishing, I am ready to come out of self-imposed hibernation feeling relieved and ecstatic. Just short of 6751 words to win the challenge at the time of writing this post, I am fairly certain that I will be able to knock these down in the next two nights.

Now the question is – are these words any good? This question bothers many new participants and many of them do not return because they can’t see the point of all those late nights, social boycotts, and agonizing hours if by the end of it, they don’t even have a book they can publish.

I have three words for them: “they are dreaming!” If they entered the challenge with that thought in mind they better stay away from the challenge next year as well. No one, and let me repeat, no one, writes a novel in the first draft. It is true many seasoned writers are now aligning the writing of their first draft with NaNoWriMo, to channel in the energy generated by writers all over the world, but they too do several rewrites before getting to the stage where they can send it to a publisher.

These 50,000 words are exactly what they are supposed to be, and what Anne Lamott author of Bird By Bird calls them ‘shitty drafts.’ They are ‘shitty’ but they are on paper. A month before they were not even there. And that is a big achievement.

A participant from the last eight years and a winner for three (including this year) I am finding that the challenge gets easier with each attempt. For once, I am typing faster than eight years ago. I know more tips and tricks for the words to keep pouring in. For the past four years, I worked on the plot and structure prior to starting the challenge, which made writing easy. And this year I used 750 Words to pace myself, keep the word count, and keep my writing in one place. But the biggest trick I learned this year was: it is harder to write 1667 words in one sitting, but it is much easier to write 600 words three times a day.

I am exhausted but I am also excited that I will concentrate on the blog now.