Maintain One Project When Your Writing Slows Down

Our writing often slows down for one reason or another...family situations, health, taking on other projects, loss of market, etc.  When this happens, try to maintain at least one project that will keep you writing. 

This might be:

• Daily journal
• Letters to friends and family
• Blog writing
• Work on a book
• Writing a column

Throughout the years, I've found my Country Kitchen column my standby.  This was my first published work many, many years ago for my hometown newspaper.  When that newspaper was sold and the new owner wanted to use syndicated columnists, I looked for another publisher.

Over the years Country Kitchen has appeared in magazines, newspapers, and blogs...sometimes in only one publication and sometimes multiple newspapers.  I sometimes didn't get paid much for it, but it kept me writing and on a deadline. 

Due to health and family situations, I've had to slow down temporarily with my writing.  However, Country Kitchen appears weekly in the McKenzie River Reflections at McKenzie Bridge, OR.  I also have begun writing in my blogs again.

Find something   to write about and keep looking for creative ways to promote your writing.

Finding Time for Writing

I find the time for my writing with current deadlines...like my b5 media blogs and Country Kitchen columns. However, finding time for my other writing projects, midst substitute teaching, working at the deli, and helping Jim with our business, seems to go by the wayside.

I must, this summer, squeeze in more than hit-and-miss time if I'm to finish:

• Sarah Jane picture book
• Papa Goes to War chapter book
• Uncle Buffalo Bill picture book
• Promoting my Family Story Writing classes

Decide upon a direction....and focus until I'm finished!

Fact or Fiction? How Can We Be Sure?

I found an interesting post, More Literary Hoaxes, on Heather Goldsmith's blog, A Creative Journal. She discusses some of the current literary hoaxes, whereby writers have tried to pass off fictionalized accounts as memoir or autobiography.

I left a comment at Heather's blog, but thought I'd include my thoughts here. Since I write a great deal of memoir in my "Country Kitchen" newspaper column, I began to wonder if my readers would think I made all this up. I attended a writers' group the other evening, and when the discussion turned to memoir as a genre, many were shaking their heads, wondering what to believe anymore.

We begin to wonder what's true and what isn't, don't we? Of course, when you write about your life, you may find you don't recall incidents exactly like others who experienced them with you. But these usually are minor things. If you fictionalize too much, you'll be caught up on it sometime.

When I was taking a children's writing workshop, we had to write about an incident in our childhood. The instructor liked mine but gave suggestions for making it more exciting. Since those details were fabricated, I was uncomfortable about writing it this way. So he suggested I make it a fiction story, incorporating the fact with fabrication. This turned out very well and sold to several children's magazines and appeared in an anthology. (I retained the rights so I could sell reprint and anthology rights.) Fiction based upon fact can be fun to write, but it should be labeled as such.

What do you think?

(c)2008 Mary Emma Allen