A Room Of Your Own: Light A Candle

lizshine74by lizshine74

In A Room Of Your Own.

We’ve been quiet here for a few days at All The Muses, in part because my sister-in-law and collaborator had her gall bladder removed and hasn’t had the strength to write much. She is home recovering now and will return soon with more musings and recipes. I am sure she will struggle some to get back into a writing routine. It takes far less than a gall bladder surgery to throw me off my groove. In truth, an unexpected phone call can do it or even just an impulse to check my email. That is what this blog thread is all about. Staying in the room. All the ways we keep writing though at times it feels like wading through calf-high mud in flip-flop sandals.

In reading a book that I will be blogging about soon I came across a piece of simple advice that seemed meant for me: light a candle. When you sit down to write, light a candle and keep it lit as long as you are in that room. Let everyone around you know what that flame symbolizes. Do what you intended to do when you struck the match.

I’ve had a candle sitting on my desk for three months and have only lit it once.

This piece of advice feels meant for me and I am going to try it, but I think the sentiment could apply to other gestures that communicate the sacredness of your writing time. Perhaps a special writing hat? A song you always play at the start and end of your writing time? Pre-writing meditation? The sound of a writing bell?

Your writing time IS that sacred. Light the candle.

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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.