Friday, June 14, 2013

How to Get Back to a Daily Writing Habit After a Break: Writing PT

I didn't break my ankle while exercising or while executing a karate kick. 
No, that would be too cool a thing to be able to share with others. (Yeah, you should see the face my foot connected with. Sure I broke my ankle, but I bet he won't try to mug anyone else!)

I fell off a step, like a little old lady, as I was walking out to my driveway where a fellow book club member was waiting to drive us to our monthly meeting. Yes, she saw me fall. To add to my embarrassment, two younger neighbors saw me hit the ground, and came running to pick me up.


Three and one-half months in a variety of casts. I was not allowed to put any weight on my left foot. When I could bear weight I graduated slowly from hobbling on two crutches to one, to using a cane. Finally I could limp along without any aids, so long as I didn't have to navigate stairs or curbs or broken sidewalks or for any real distance.

It's amazing how much muscle mass you can lose in four months of not putting any weight on one leg and foot, especially when you're a mature adult. It is now June 2013 and I still walk with a limp that affects my gait enough to exacerbate the back pain I was in physical therapy (PT) for prior to breaking my ankle October 25th, 2012. And I'm still in PT for both my ankle and my back.

All this to explain why I haven't posted anything on here in almost a year, and why my creative writing muscles are as out of shape as my walking muscles are. I needed PT for my writing.

I started slowly on my writing PT program. Between medicated naps I read, facebooked, surfed the internet, and caught up on several television series by marathon viewing every episode of every season via Netflix (more about that, and what it taught me about writing, in a future post).

As I progressed, I found a new cell phone app called Heyku and I started playing around with it. They also have a Facebook page. Heyku encourages you to write your life's moments in updates as haiku poetry (here referred to as a heyku) which is then posted as a photograph. Once you post your heyku, you can no longer edit it. I got a following for my heyku's so I started a Tumblr blog with my Heyku's, my haiku's, and some of my other poems, called Life In Poetry. Here's one of my heyku's that was chosen for the Editor's Desk (for obvious reasons):
Because I create them on the spot and immediately post them, they are generally rough. Occasionally, however, one will have potential, and that too is like life. Most of the moments we live seem unmemorable and even repetitive, but occasionally a moment will rise to the level of poetry.

Writing heyku's is a great way to slip back into writing daily. They don't have to be perfect. It's all about play and exploration. Later you may want to keep a daily or weekly journal. Journaling can segue into blogging. You could also review all those books you read. GoodReads is one place to do that, another is a blog. Start experimenting with flash fiction. Here are four sites to explore:
By the time you've upped your daily word count you most likely have already begun work on that next article, essay, short story, or book. After all, how many of us can resist writing when ideas come to us? See how easy it is to get back into the habit of writing regularly?

What about you? What do you do to get back into writing when you've taken a break, or just gotten out of the daily writing habit?



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