Ease Lessons for Writers
In your writing life, no matter how hard you work or how well you plan, things won't always unfold the way you'd hoped. In Ease Lessons for Writers, we explore what gets in the way of our writing, why that happens, and why it matters. Together we learn how to make our writing easier and more joyful. I'm your host, Monna McDiarmid, a writer and coach based in Japan and Nova Scotia. Website: monnamcdiarmid.com/ | Newsletter: monnamcdiarmid.com/subscribe/ | Instagram: @monnamcdiarmidwrites/ | Patreon: @MonnaMcDiarmid
Ease Lessons for Writers
34. Caroline Donahue (Season 3, Episode 1/3)
TODAY'S GUEST: CAROLINE DONAHUE
As a book-loving Writing and Book Coach, Caroline doesn't believe there is any force more powerful in this world than writing. With a Masters in Psychology and Expressive Arts, and a subsequent career in the book world that began with working in a bookshop, progressing through editing and producing a thrice annual auction catalogue, to proofreading for a prominent ad agency, she has apprenticed herself to writing for over ten years. In 2016, she launched The Secret Library Podcast and has since interviewed over 100 writers, editors, agents, and publishers to get to the bottom of what it takes to write a book. She is currently writing her own novel and co-editing the anthology, I Wrote it Anyway.
HOMEWORK INVITATIONS :
1. Field Notes on experiments with time and time boxes
Conduct a set of gentle experiments about your writing times. Write at different times of the day. Try writing before you check your calendar for the day and between appointments. Make notes on writing experiments re: how you feel in your body, how much spaciousness or resistance you feel, and how playful the writing time feels to you. You're tracking your own ease.
2. Tarot for The Writer
Try pulling cards as a gift to you, the writer. What do you not know yet that would be of tremendous help to your future self? (Your future self who has no money or novels published.)
3. Email to a Student
Think of a writing student or client who might come to you with a similar issue. They run an online business and have created the life and schedule they've always yearned for but find it increasingly difficult to find or make time for their writing. The issue isn't insufficient time but rather that your student keeps prioritizing those activities that are in service of other people and that make money. She is genuinely perplexed. You write her an email of encouragement and support, and share some tips on how she might think differently about her situation in order to help her ease back into her writing chair.
b) Talk with a couple of students or colleagues whom you trust and request their wisdom.
4. Permission
What is the simplest statement of permission you need to give yourself? What is the essence of this permission slip? You could:
- allow it to be messy or awkward or uncomfortable. (I am LEARNING how to own a business that sustains me while writing.)
- make your own writing the most important work that you do (Come up with a method by which you pay yourself for the time you spend writing!)
- allow yourself to fall in love again with your writing process. (I believe it was Elizabeth Gilbert who referred to this as having an affair with her writing)
- take a break from writing
- write three days a week instead of five
b) Display your slip and/or create a ritual to let the Universe know where you'd like some help.
Where to find Caroline:
Website: https://www.carolinedonahue.com/
Podcast: https://www.secretlibrarypodcast.com/
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ABOUT EASE LESSONS:
Music: “Meekness” by Kai Engel, used under Creative Commons Attribution license
Editor: Damien Pitter
Host: Monna McDiarmid (pronounced Mona McDermid) | Writer, Coach and Counselor
Website: MonnaMcDiarmid.com
Newsletter: The Sunday Reader
Patreon: where I share monthly excerpts from my writing memoir in progress
Instagram: @monnamcdiarmid
