The Writing Meal

          I was thinking the other day about how, for me at least, writing is like eating. If I don’t write, I feel as though I’ve missed a meal. I can get by with writing grocery lists, emails, even blogs, but that isn’t really substantial enough to sustain me. The longer I go, the mentally and creatively weaker and less nourished I feel. That’s where I am now, weak and undernourished, in need of sustenance.

          The type of food I eat can change, but I have to eat. Same with writing. Just as I can eat chicken or beef, pasta salad or mashed potatoes, so I can feed my writing with fiction or non-fiction, blogs or stories or novels. Lately, it seems as though I have been subsisting on the writing equivalent of carrot sticks, fruit salads and popcorn. Good, healthy snacks, but not complete meals. It’s time, as Shonna has challenged, to plan some writing meals.

          But I need to be careful and not try to eat too much at a time. Eating a huge, heavy meal after a long period of fasting or scarcity is bad for the body. It would be just as bad for me to load myself up with writing expectations. That type of thinking is what caused me to start avoiding writing in the first place. So I’ll just ease back into writing regularly, renewing or recreating routines and goals that propel me forward but don’t overtax my writing self.

          As I stated last week, my fiction needs to be playtime. I need to just play with the ideas and stories in my head. No pressure to produce, no looking for completion. Time enough for that later.

          The main meal, the writing projects that take my first focus will be my non-fiction projects. I’ll be writing more about them when I give my last 9×99 update in September, but I have two projects I would like to have finished soon. I’d hoped to have them completed by September 7, but I doubt that will happen. I will have them finished by December 31st. I’m shooting for October 31st, so I can completely focus on creating a new story during November’s NaNoWriMo.

          In keeping with Shonna’s “make a plan and work it” challenge, I plan to work on one of my non-fiction projects at least 30 mins every weekday. I will continue writing my blogs. (And post them on time!) I will also purpose to write at least 100 new fiction words, on anything I want. But no flogging myself with guilt if I don’t! That is my fun food. And my extra snacks will be the times I work on E&M, that lovable monster work-in-progress from my past.

          In addition to “eating” well in my writing, I will also exercise. Three times a week I will do some sort of writing exercises. It might be using writing prompts and/or freewriting to stimulate my creativity; it might be working through one of the many online classes I’ve taken in the past; it might be reading and utilizing a writing craft book. Whatever it is, I will spend at least 15 min 3 times a week.

          Just as I don’t always eat the same amount every meal, I probably will have high and low output writing days. That’s fine. As long as I have a balanced diet, both of food and writing, I will stay physically and mentally healthy.

          Enough talk. Let’s eat!