Your Writing Health-Check

 

Our writing lives run to a beat. At this time of year there is plenty of good advice and to add to it, I light-heartedly present three notions for you to consider.

   1.    Take your writing pulse – does your writing year begin in January and end in December. Really? It is so easy to get caught up in the New Year hype when that isn’t the rhythm your writing follows. Result – misery, guilt, hysteria. Some of us may follow the school calendar which starts in September and ends in July, because our domestic lives revolve around school age children. Or maybe like me you run to a seasonal calendar – spring/summer demands garden attention, autumn/winter relaxes in the writing chair. Heaven help you, if you are gliding along to the Publisher’s Year. But take your pulse so you know how you write fruitfully and can ward off the coercions of modern society and the dreaded social media.

2.Check your heart rate – the heart of course is a complex muscle subject to the mechanics of the body. Our writing too has mechanics which we must master to complete our work to the best standard we can. For me, I use Scrivener to help me to word-process my writing. I like Scrivener because it offers the option of changing around chapters to my whim, a storyboard to recap the bigger picture and space to add research. I use it in conjunction with Word. For grammar, sentence pacing and spelling, I use Pro-Writing Aid which is a good step towards the self-editing required on a project. Whatever you use, review what you need in your writing journey. Maybe you should take a course online or a one-to-one retreat. I’m thinking of that. Evaluate what will keep your writing heart healthy.

3.  Are you still breathing? In every emergency call, the operator asks, “Is the patient breathing?” Without that function, all treatment is useless. It is the same for writers. You need life and creativity in your writing. If you are a Christian, time and time again, the Lord brings you back to dependence on Him, for creative life, and the very breath.

 “If the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, He will quicken your mortal body” (paraphrase of Romans 8:11)

 The context is that the Holy Spirit will raise you to eternal life just as He did with Jesus. The Holy Spirit prompts and nurtures our creativity while on this earth. So, check your breathing. Is the Holy Spirit living within you and helping you with your writing? It doesn’t matter whether you are writing for the secular or specifically for the Christian market, you need the Holy Spirit’s calming prompts and guidance.

 God’s blessings on all your writing projects in the coming year.

Rosalie Weller is an ordained minister in the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa. She is now retired and writing in the East Midlands. Her writing interests include bible study guides, devotional material, historical fiction and poetry. All her books are available from Amazon. She serves ACW in the post of Groups' Coordinator. For more information, see her website www.rosalieweller.com and her YouTube channel Reverend Rosalie Weller