Everything to gain

lizshine74by lizshine74

In On writing.

Slept in til 6! The sun was persistent coming through the window, lighting on where I was sleeping on the couch. Ajax whined while I downed a cup of coffee, scratching at the door, gazing at me with his begging eyes.
We ran down to the water’s edge. The tide was way out. I collected three intact sand dollars, a sturdy, smooth black rock and half a large clam shell along the way. Ajax chased the birds and bathed in the water and I felt the gift of the moment. To be running along the ocean, the day mine to create.
I got little writing done hooked into the wireless at Cafe Amici, gave in to the distractions of email and Facebook, then strolled back to her our “home”.
I’ve been writing now for a couple of hours, have rewritten everything I lost due to a technology glitch yesterday, and am now moving forward again in this story. I’m cognizant today of how difficult it is sometimes to beat back the voices that keep us from believing in our stories and feeling I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Happy summer y’all!
Back to the writing…

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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.