Escaping to Write: Day 2

lizshine74by lizshine74

In A Room Of Your Own, On writing.

7:40 AM Sunday

Woke up at 6:00 and went for a run on the beach. There is really nothing like running along the water’s edge. The waves sneak up, then retreat. The wind wicks sweat away. The ocean sounds like every answer to every question you ever had. It’s just for you to pick up on the write conversation being whispered. The seagulls are congregated for their morning feast.
The distance it took me to get from my hotel to the water’s edge was enough time to dump the clutter in my mind, so that I could focus on the important questions regarding my novel. So, I asked myself some important questions—at one point was actually talking out loud to my main character—as I ran, ran, ran. The last question was the scariest, but I asked. What’s the point, Liz? I was ecstatic to find I had an answer. So, as I walked a cool down back to the hotel, I ran over the breakthroughs I’d come to. Now, I’m getting started in implementing those changes in the current draft and the question is: where do I start? I think I’ll start with one change at a time, figure out where in the story I need to start with it and then thread it through to the end. Then, I’ll do the same for the next change.

Namaste.

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Some past posts to keep you making time: 
Adjust your pace accordingly.
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
See it to achieve it
Washing the dishes
Write slowly
A celebration of the pause
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Zen accident
Get out of your comfort zone

lizshine74

lizshine74

Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe. She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook. She lives in Olympia, WA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.