During the holidays, it’s hard enough to keep up with everything on our to-do list, much less write.  With that in mind, I thought I would spend this week just providing some inspiration about writing, instead of any specific instruction.  And with the New Year quickly approaching, maybe some of these postings will inspire writing resolutions to carry you through 2012.  Happy Holidays!

Rekindle the Romance

“Often, in about three quarters of what I do, I reach a point,
somewhere fairly early on, when I think I’m going to abandon this story.
I get myself through a day or two of bad depression, grousing around.
And I think of something else I can write.  It’s sort of like a love affair:
You’re getting out all the disappointment and misery by going out
with some new man you don’t really like at all,
but you haven’t noticed that yet.  Then, I will suddenly come up with something
about the story I abandoned: I will see how to do it.”
–Alice Munro, Paris Review

So often we start out full of love and energy for the new piece we are writing.  The excitement can almost be overwhelming.  But then the honeymoon is over, and the tough work of figuring out how to keep the story going and realizing the “marriage” between you and your writing isn’t nearly as romantic or fun as it once was.  That’s when you get a roving eye, a yearning heart, for something new and exciting – you want to capture those early feelings, when you were head-over-heels in love with your story.  So you flirt with a little poetry or meet up with a new short story in the stealthy morning hours when everyone else is still asleep. You might even abandon your love entirely and take to painting, watching a lot of TV, or maybe sleeping all the time.  But if you give yourself time, treat yourself with kindness, the adoration often arises again.  The next thing you know, you and your work are intimate again, and not only are you getting together for dates once more, but there is a new mutual feeling of commitment to one another.