Day 3 - What To Do When Writing Seems To Hard - A StoryADay Update

Maybe you're tired, sad, or otherwise struggling emotions when you're trying to write. What do you do, to keep going?

 I have two suggestions, today.

Find more at https//storyaday.org

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
Good morning, goodevening, good afternoon.
It's Julie from Story A Day andit's day three of Story A day.
May 20, 25, and maybe you woke upthis morning a little bit tired,
a little bit sad, a little bitsomething, and you're thinking, Ugh,
I have to write the story today.
Well, I have two approaches thatI'm gonna recommend for you,
both of which start out the same.

(00:26):
The first is to maybe just stayin your jammies for a while.
Make yourself something nutritiousas nutritional, a meal as you can.
I've got scrambled eggs here.
Talk to somebody who doesn'texist purely inside your head.
I've got somebody in my house.
You might need to call someone orrecommend doing that and then thinking

(00:47):
to yourself, not I have to write a storytoday, but I get to write a story today.
I know that sounds abit Pollyanna-ish, but.
Sometimes it helps, the stories we tellin our heads dictate how we spend our day.
So then this is where mytwo methodologies diverge.

(01:08):
One is to look at the emotions you'refeeling and say, yep, those are certainly
some emotions and I am definitelyfeeling them and I'm gonna sit with
them and look at them for a little bit.
And, uh, and then I'm gonna write my storyanyway because I made a commitment and I'm
gonna write the story a day this month.
For me, and it's somethingI'm doing for myself.

(01:31):
This how I feel in the moment.
And you'll sit down and you'llwrite something and you will let
go any thoughts about its qualityand in writing your story, the
emotions inside you will change.
They may deepen, they may changeto happier emotions, they may
change to sadder emotions,and you will experience them.

(01:54):
And if that seems too dangerous.
Which for some of you it might be.
Here's the other path.
I'm not sure which oneI'm gonna take yet today,
and that is to simply look at the prompttoday and to write a sentence and to try
and make that sentence as good as you can.

(02:15):
If you can turn that sentence into a ministory all by itself, and as you do that.
You can be thinking about whatelse you might want to do with this
prompt later when you have moretime, more energy, less sadness, less
whatever that you're feeling, andmake some notes about that maybe.

(02:35):
And if that's all the energy you havetoday, that's fine, that's an epic win.
But either way, don't give up,
show up for your writingbecause there's more to today.
There's more to you than howyou're feeling in this moment.

(02:56):
And yes, I am saying all of this forme as well as for you keep writing.