The Modern Wordist Blog

Do you ever sit down to write and your brain feels tight? Like it needs a little stretching or yoga practice? There are endless ways to warm up your creative muscles without officially sitting down to work on your current project. Plenty of people swear by Julia Cameron's Morning Pages practice. But what if you don't have that kind of time? Or maybe you’ve found that the Morning Pages approach actually drains some of your energy and focus. That's where a shorter exercise can help. Over the next few weeks, I will periodically share blog posts exploring what I call one word meditations. Today, I'll focus on an acrostic practice you may remember from elementary school that can help you get your juices flowing, and allow for reflection that can strengthen your writing by helping you see from different angles. I'm only going to give you one example I came up with while writing this post. You're welcome to come up with your own take on the word I chose. Or feel free t...

You’re doing what you do at your day job. Taking care of your kids. Supporting your parents. Keeping up with geopolitical events when you should be sleeping. Dealing with the aftermath of severe weather. Encouraging friends and friends of friends to resist fascism. Stifling frustrated noises when ads pop up over parts of the articles you’re trying to read when you should be sleeping. Managing background feelings of worry, frustration, and oh-hell-no fired-upness. Making cringy faces at your budget.   In other words — having trouble writing right now?   Or even reading?   Same.   If you can’t sit down to write right now, or you feel the stress of everything pushing on your brain, don’t be hard on yourself. Writing is much more than composing sentences, and there are ways to maintain a creative spark and low-level momentum when the thought of writing more than three paragraphs feels like oof . This week, I offer eight simple but effective strategies to help you maintai...