Word Surfer: 7 Reasons to Wake Up and Write

Oasis Feature ~ Creative Writing 

"Early Morning Surfer" San Juan, Puerto Rico

Do you ever wonder how to develop your creativity so that your writing ideas are fresh and inspired? I am sure that the key to unlocking new ideas is to foster an ongoing relationship with your creative self. You can develop this ability. Decide to be dedicated to your own projects and make them a priority in your life. If your time is constantly compromised because of work demands, family duties and social commitments, be warned. You have to choose to develop contact with yourself first over being on call for everyone else. If you are a people pleaser making this decision is a lot harder than it seems. It forces you to reexamine how your life is organized and insists that you commit to fitting in alone time which is devoted to writing.

As a morning writer, you have to have the same dedication as the surfer in the above photograph. Waking up early, he walks to the water, carries his surfboard and enters the chilly ocean long before an ordinary swimmer feels the need to take a plunge. Every morning, you must write a few pages about anything. It does not matter if you write about nonsense because the initial point is to develop the habit of writing. Over time, your writing content will change. Many writing coaches suggest that it is important to write in the morning; however, over the years of my own writing practice, I know that it provides the perfect way to develop your insight and creativity. When you wake up and write, you gain these and many other benefits.

7 Reasons to Wake Up and Write

1. Remembering your dreams: When you start a morning writing practice, you are able to remember your dreams better. At first you will likely remember only dream fragments, but later you begin to discover that the more you record, the more you also remember your dreams. Dreams provide you with clues about your life and make visible the creative force of the unconscious.

2. Understanding yourself better: Writing over time allows you to realize who you are and identifies your values. As a consequence,  it becomes easier to say no or yes to people without feeling pressured or compromised.


3. Clarifying your intentions: Through the process of writing, you may write about why you made certain life decisions. These written explorations help to strengthen your resolve because you remember how you arrived at these decisions.


4.  Discovering hidden motivations: Nothing reveals dishonesty as much as writing a long rationalization about how and why you are right. In fact, the real reasons behind a particular action become clear as you see your words on the page. 


5. Knowing what is bothering you:  It is so much easier to know the truth about your feelings if you write down some of the disturbing mental noise that bothers you upon waking. Without writing, these worries often accompany you during the day. Often just writing about anxiety lessens it or may even take it away.


6. Improving your life: A regular morning writing practice provides you with a sturdy framework that helps to build self trust and confidence.  It enlivens your day with zest and lends purpose to the years.


7. Making ideas real: Dreams and ambitions identify what you desire but writing about them helps you to become proactive. Through regular writing, you are able to move forward and accomplish these life goals.


Finally, I suggest that you extend your morning practice into your day by carrying a notebook and pen with you everywhere. I do not recommend that you use an electronic device because the temptation is too great. You will take out your smartphone to make a note; for example, and before you realize it, you are surfing the net, socializing on Facebook or reading Email. With paper and pen handy, when you have a few spare moments, you can continue writing and exploring the ever-enriching conversation with your creative self. 


Cynthia Pittmann
San Juan, Puerto Rico

Happy writing!

Facing Fear

Hello Writers Risers and Readers,

I feel a need to reintroduce myself. My name is Katherine Jenkins and I blog over at Lessons from the Monk I Married. I started this blog after my writing group in Seattle decided to name themselves the Writers Risers. The point of our little group was and is to meet and inspire each other to keep writing and keep creating and to follow our dreams. Over the course of two years this blog has come to include over 30 contributing writers from around the world! I hope to expand that number, so if you are interested in being a contributor, please post a comment here. There are some guidelines, but you can get an idea of the writing we have here by reading a few posts. Starting next month, I plan to provide monthly themes. To the current contributors, you can choose to write on the chosen theme or submit a post on another topic. For August the theme is:

FACING FEAR

Can't wait to see what kind of writing comes from that one! I'm going to get to work on it soon and you'll find my post here in August! Until then, happy writing and creating!

Katherine

Hello! My name is...

First, let me say how excited I am about being asked to participate in this group!  Reading the credentials of the other writers on this blog was a bit intimidating, but I decided to close my eyes and jump.

I fell in love with books at a very young age.  I loved to write when I was still in grade school, making up simple stories for my eyes alone.  During my junior high years, my focus shifted to writing songs and poetry.  Strumming my guitar, sharing my original compositions with any friends that would listen, I dreamed of being a song-writer; but I never had the confidence to pursue it for a career.

My high school teachers often told my mother that I should be a writer.  However, they never told me!  (I learned of this only recently when my mom told someone else.)  I loved Lit classes, and still wrote my songs and poems, occasionally tossing in a short story.  Sadly, I never considered it more than a hobby.

Through my young adult years, I worked various jobs while raising my only child, a daughter.  My writing became almost non-existent, except for the time when, in my thirties, some college courses reignited my love of writing.  Even though my instructors gave me the highest marks, and encouraged me to enter my essays into local contests, I still lacked the confidence to actually do it.  At one point, I started writing a novel.  After about three chapters I lost steam and put it away.

Now I'm in my fifties and have finally found the confidence to pursue my life-long dream.  I am over fifty-thousand words into my manuscript.  And I have a plan!  Perhaps I'll share about that next time...

I currently write three blogs:  a farm blog, an essays blog (my miscellaneous site) and a blog about my pursuit of becoming a published author.

Greetings!

I'd like to thank Katherine for inviting me to join Writers Rising. I'm a 44 (as of December) year old writer who has been steadily creating since I learned how to write. My first writing implement was an Olympia manual typewriter; I learned how to use it in junior high from Mr. McAffee, an eccentric and often frightening South American gentleman who had the tendency to shout out "Heil Hitler!" just to see if everyone was paying attention.

My second writing tool was a Smith-Corona electric colored a sort of greenish brown. It had no brain whatsoever - no memory, no special effects. To make corrections you backspace, switch over to the correction ribbon, and type over the mistake. The letters were often out of line. I kind of wish I still had that typewriter - it presented such a beat-up and impressionistic typeface, it would be pretty retro-cool from a contemporary design point of view.

My third writing tool was one of the first line Macintosh home computers that I used when I was at my then-girlfriend's apartment - this was about 1985 or so. It was sort of mind-bending seeing my words appear on what looked like a black and white TV. The novelty wore off as soon as the relationship fell apart, and I went back to scribbling in journals like a proper poet should.

After some experimentation with borrowed memory typewriters and at one point an elderly S-C manual in a suitcase like journalists used to use (it had a blocky modernist font I think designers would kill to get their hands on now) which I had purchased from a yard sale, I got back to working on a Mac SE for the next few years. When that went the way of the dinosaur I hopscotched through a number of PCs, and there are great many .doc files from those years that are floating around somewhere, probably on 2 1/4" floppy disks.

At the moment I am communicating with you via my refurbished Macbook 15" running OS X v. 10.5.8. It's fairly close to the point of having outlived its usefulness, but I have little income to speak of at the moment and none to direct toward a newer machine.

I've got an awful lot of work done on this machine. I think it's because it's so easy. It's ergonomically easy, it's technologically easy, and since it was used I got it at a very competitive price. I've typed poems, songs, murder mysteries, horror, erotica, resumes, cover letters, emails to my mother, complaint letters, everything imaginable on this machine. It seems fairly advanced now, but I smile thinking of how we'll view these machines ten years from now. Things are going to be so different then I think we'll barely recognize ourselves.

Feel free to write in comments here about writing machines you've used over the years, what you're using now, and what you plan or hope to be using in the future.

Thanks again for making me a part of your group!

- Erik

Gathering Contributors

Hello Everyone! While it would be nice if each of the Writers Rising members could be part of a small group of Writers Rising members, we realize that forming a group may be difficult. This is especially true for those living in a one-horse town. So, if it's possible to form a "live" writing group in your community, that's great. If it's not possible, this virtual online group will serve you well. The point here is to share writing and projects and to get feedback. People who have formed groups can share their own group experience. This blog was set up to be a collaborative way to share writing and writing experiences. Right now, there are two contributors listed on this blog. If you are interested in being a contributor on this site, please leave a comment at the end of this blog and including your name, blog URL and e-mail. Your information will not be posted, but will go to me directly. We want to start with about 20 contributors. Thanks for reading!