Do you have a writing process or plan to get the creative juices flowing through your fingertips?
Are you a yellow-legal-pad-and-pen-aficionado, or do you insist on tapping out copy on a keyboard laptop?
No matter what method you follow, the most important step to take when a blank screen or piece of paper is staring you in the face is to relax.
Be calm and unwind.
Ernest Hemingway, one of the world’s most influential writers, believed it.
“Don’t think about your writing when you’re not writing,” he quipped.
For Toni Morrison, it was rising to greet the morning sun and drinking coffee in tranquility.
“For me, light is the signal in the transition,” she explained. “It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.”
Author J.K. Rowling remembers how a four-hour train delay allowed her to create the essence of Harry Potter in her mind.
“I simply sat and thought while all the details bubbled up in my brain. Perhaps, if I had slowed down the ideas to capture them on paper, I might have stifled some of them.”
So, take a breath and settle in to read this short article on how to relax and write better.
