Living is Writing
October 27, 2024
This year has been a great year for my writing and sharing about one of my passions: publishing.
I was able to share as a keynote speaker at a writer’s conference for the first time. I’ve done many workshops and taken appointments at conferences but I had never been one of the featured speakers. This was actually a career goal and it happened when I was invited back to Mid-South Christian Writers Conference (the link is for the upcoming conference in 2025). I enjoyed speaking with the writers there two years ago and particularly enjoyed the honor of being invited back as a keynote speaker in 2024.
For my keynote speech, I used the theme I shared first at my company’s (Our Daily Bread) writers retreat for devotional writers. “Living is writing” was a phrase I happened to say that others repeated (so it made me think it resonated with other writers). You know speaking really is a way to workshop ideas, which reminds me of the point of this post: Living is writing.
Sometimes writers beat ourselves up because we don’t sit at the computer for eight hours and write out passionate, beautiful copy that sings. Puhlease…if you’re anything like me, thirty straight minutes at the computer can feel like a great, productive session; give me an hour, and I think I can write more books! My point (or points) is (are):
- Don’t beat yourself up–that’s counterproductive any way. Life happens; concentration modes are different; word smiths stay musing…so don’t restrict yourself to a clock or a schedule (only!)
- Write when you can; carry that laptop and notes app everywhere you go and grab a few minutes when you can (this summer, I got a jump start on a freelance assignment while my daughter and friends rode rollercoasters at Six Flags…I was in the mall across the street soaking up the wifi!)
- Leave yourself notes in your document to remind you where you were so you can make the most of that 15 minutes you do get to write.
- And finally…remember that living is writing. What you do, what you observe, what you say , what you feel, what you encounter…oh, it can all be used in your writing. So while you may not get eight hours a day to input your writing into a word processing program on your computer, you do get many hours to live. And that life, that living, informs your writing. Go live, my writer friends.
