Lemons

“I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes... and somehow the activity of writing changes everything. Or appears to do so.”—Joyce Carol Oates

Sometimes we lose heart. Life has handed us a basketful of lemons, circumstances have worn our endurance thin, we’ve been disappointed or broken-hearted . . .Events conspire to derail our writing.

It is in those times it can be helpful to revisit your writing vows – the ‘for better or worse’ part, or possibly the ‘til death do us part’ bit. Even when it’s not easy, it’s good to write. The act of writing can help carry us over a difficult time.

Be kind to yourself, set easy to reach writing goals for each day, but do write each day. Journal, write an article or essay to vent some of the feelings, write a scene that has no connection to your current WIP. But keep facing the page. Because once that habit is broken, it takes a lot of strength and effort to reinstate it.

Think of writing in the hard times as making lemonade out of the lemons you’ve been given. Or, as a very good friend of mind says, “Spin the shit into gold.”