Bounding back from revisions

Writing is re-writing, but once you've done your rewrites it's time to move on into the next book, story or article. A fresh start on a new project can seem tempting while you're digging out of the problems of revising drafts. Once you're clear of that book, though, starting can be difficult.

Over at the blog Be The Story, author J. Timothy King offers several layers of advice on how to beat the post-revisionist blues. He shares more than 10 aspects to consider about tools to approaching that new work. One that stands out, for me after my first novel Viral Times, is to stop judging the completed work.

Have a look at King's post. It's adapted from How to Lift Depression ... Fast by Joe Griffin. As creators we tend to put a lot of our self-worth into our work. While the judgment is an appropriate part of the work, that kind of criticism tamps down our spirit to return to new creations. Let the best response to completing your work be encouraging, even if the writing is far from perfect. Writers improve their ability by writing. Authors have more than one project inside them.

Write what is closest

The writing books advise us to write what we know. Bunk, mostly. What we know comes from what we learn, and I believe there's no better way to learn something than to write about it, taking apart the particular pieces of making a hot latte, or the many gifted moments in creating Shrimp Franchez, butterflied and battered in parmesean, eggs, butter and love.

We should all write about something that creeps as close as the cup to our lips or the fork to our face. Writing about the lump of ice in your chest when you hear your son is on an IV, because he's gone to the hospital. Write about the firey ivy that blooms all around your heart when your house is alight with laughter, dozens of people you know and love, enjoying each other in a party. Or about Soda Crackers, like Raymond Carver wrote in his poem of the same name. An alcoholic of many decades, when Carver finally sobered up and found his Happiness (the Tuesday entry), he wrote of soda crackers,

I never thought
I could go on like this
about soda crackers.
But I tell you
the clear sunshiny
days are here, at last.

Write what you know, I suppose, if you know it close. If you have learned something, or want to learn it, then it will be alive with your writing. The spirit you bring to the words will be like a watering can to thirsty flowers.