Hi there, guys and dolls! Today, I’m letting Andrea and Heather take over the blog again, talking about the ebb and flow of writing and getting the words out in the form of a story.

Sometimes it’s a mad rush, sentences like waves, fingers flying on keys, great swaths of paragraphs, high thousands of words hitting the page and making sense, the tangibles that give a great sense of accomplishment.

But other times, it’s about all the background, all the thinking and plotting, the dreaming and scheming. That work can be hard to measure and can sometimes be confused with “writer’s block.”  Maybe we need to rethink what that term means, and is it really that you are stuck, or need to accept that phase as incubating or percolating ideas that will create the rounded out picture and rush of what we define as productivity.

We find the more that we let ourselves get involved in the entire process of writing, the more we understand it’s multi-faceted. We’re not even going to get into the whole marketing aspect in this post. That’s a whole other universe that is a great mystery to most – even those who think they’ve got it all sussed up find the game changes all the time.

What we’re talking about is how we work creatively and this can be applied to any kind of medium, not just writing. Everything is active, including that staring out the window, enjoying leisure time, and giving in to what we think are blocks. It’s incubation, formation, and devising new stories, angles, plots – quite often subconsciously. It has incredibly high value, if we let ourselves accept and understand it.

Go with the flow. When the words fly, let them, get them down, don’t edit, just do. When we find ourselves needing to breathe or gain inspiration, rest, we learn to do that, too. If we need distraction, understand that is meant to be as well. The higher mind will take over and line things up, getting us ready if we just stay out of the way and trust the process. Not only does it enrich life, it enriches your writing, too.

Warm Regards,

Andrea & Heather

aka that Barbara Jean