Don't let the Holidays Stop You Writing!
Tips for for sneaking away to write.
Dear Friends, Writers, Readers and all,
Wishing you all the best for the holiday season from our team at Writer’s Journey (hehe, that’s me!). I hope you’ve had a good year, that you’ve been able to realise your creative goals or at least make some headway towards them.
Here at Writers Journey we’ve been pretty busy. Draft Busters Online has been meeting all year for monthly modules. Two of our members signed contracts with major publishers which is great motivation for the rest of us. We will start our online sessions again on Jan 15. Mondays 10 - 11.30 am, Fridays 3.30 - 5.30pm, Australian Eastern Standard Time. Let me know if you would like to join.
We held two writing retreats at Namgyalgar Retreat Centre in the Glass House Mountains, QLD. And in June we headed to Italy on our Sensing Italy retreat. In November we had our epic 16 day Story Hunters tour in India. See pics from our 2023 retreats here.
There’s still room to join all our trips in 2024…
Haiku Walking in Japan, Mar 27 – April 1, 2024
Sensing Italy, June 4 – 15, 2024.
Gascony Residency, June 19 – 30, 2024.
Check the Writers Journey website for all trip details.
THANK YOU
A big thank you to all who sent congrats when I posted the final episode of my travel memoir on SS last week. If you have missed the whole thing all the chapters are archived here. Dip in and out or scroll to the bottom to start reading from the beginning.
A CHRISTMAS GIFT
Wondering what to give friends and family this year? Save The Children are just one of the organisations working to improve the situation of children in Gaza and worldwide. Donate here.
HOLIDAY WRITING
At holiday time when the streets empty out and shopping centres fall silent, a wonderful sense of peace descends. It’s the same kind of peace early morning writers describe as they relish the stillness of the house before it stirs into life, or night owls savour as they burn the candle past midnight.
There are plenty of times in the holiday period offering these sorts of silence filled moments when you can sneak away or simply whip out your note book and make some jottings.
For example…
When everyone falls comotose into a post Christmas lunch nap and you make yourself a long black coffee
When someone puts a Christmas movie on for the littlies in another room with the door closed
When on a long beach walk you dawdle as everyone else strides on ahead
When you decide to climb to the top of a gum tree just to see if you still can
When you purposely hide your phone charger so you can kick your scrolling habit for a few days at least…
And..
don’t forget if you are at a family gathering, there are characters galore to observe, not to mention all the subtext, tension and dramatic action going on…
So here is my challenge…
Starting now, take a few minutes each day of the holidays to steal away and write. Ten minutes, twenty minutes is all you need. Begin by describing what you see around you, then let the writing take you where ever it wants to go. Bring yourself back to your immediate surrounds at the end. Collect your pieces over the holidays. Put them in a folder or on a blog called My Holiday Writing.
Happy Holidays!
Jan
