back to writing!
back to writing!
a little preview of an 8-week program to reignite your writing practice
Hi, all! It is still 92 degrees and a bajillion percent humidity here in my part of south Jersey, but fall is coming for us soon. I’ll be back on campus (with a vaccine and mask mandate for faculty/staff and students, thank goodness) starting next week, and my kids go back to school the week after that. I’m buying school supplies and getting my kids’ hair cut and trying to figure out if they have enough halfway decent t shirts to get us through the first couple weeks of school.
I always love these back to school rituals. This year, it all feels both familiar and strange. My kids and I are returning back to our respective schools in a way that’s something approaching normal, and I’m genuinely thrilled to get to be in a classroom with (masked and vaccinated) students again. This time of year always has the potential for a fresh start. After the disorientation and isolation of the past 18 plus months, I’d love to invite you to spend 8 weeks this fall reconnecting with your writing practice. I’m calling it Back to Writing.
Here’s how it will work: on September 1 (that’s a week from today!) I’ll send out an email inviting you to set your vision for the 8-week Back to Writing series. For the 8 weeks after that (September 6 through October 29), I’ll send out a newsletter every Monday with a tip, suggestion, or way of reframing something that’s hard about writing. We’ll work on things like dealing with digital distractions, overcoming imposter syndrome, creating accountability systems, and why you can’t ever really “find time” for writing—you have to make it. Some of the Monday newsletters will also features interviews with people who are particularly smart about overcoming particular challenges to establishing and maintaining a regular writing practice. With the Monday newsletters, I’ll also invite you to set your goals for the week and share them in the comments. I’ll check back in via email newsletter each Friday.
This series is about finding ways to make writing a more regular and less stressful part of your life. While I love challenges like Jami Attenberg’s #1000wordsofsummer and the April poem a day (obviously ;) ) that focus on high productivity over a relatively short period of time, this series has a different focus. The idea here is to integrate writing into your regular life, in a way you can maintain even when you’re commuting, making dinner, folding laundry, seeing friends, and doing all the other great things that can pose a challenge to staying deeply connected to your writing life. If #1000wordsofsummer is a sustained sprint, this is a daily walk—something that makes your life richer, something you can keep doing all the time. 30 days is meant to be a time frame that’s long enough to set new habits. In 8 weeks, you can transform your relationship to your writing—both what you make and how you feel about it.
If you’re already signed up for the newsletter, you’re also automatically signed up for Back to Writing—no cost, no need to sign up anywhere else. If you have friends or a writing group who you think would benefit from an 8-week long to get back to their writing, I’d love it if you would pass along this invitation.
I’ll send the first official Back to Writing email next week, but if you’d like to prep a bit between now and then, here are a few questions to help you get started:
how would you describe your writing practice now? when do you write? where? what habits help you maintain your writing practice? what obstacles or distractions are holding you back?
what are you working on now in your writing? what projects are you hoping to finish or make substantial progress on this fall?
You might also think about how you can make your space more conducive to your writing. I’m a big believer in a clean-up as a way of making psychic space for writing and thinking, and I just made a big stack of books I’d been using for research that I’m finally ready to return to the library. It’s a way of reminding myself that I’ve read enough for right now, and what I need most is to revise the writing I’ve already done. You could also think about pictures or encouraging words to keep at your work space to remind yourself of your goals.
I’m really looking forward to writing with you all through the fall. If you have ideas for things to cover in the Back to Writing series, or people you think are really smart about overcoming distractions, busy-ness, and self-doubt in their writing, I’d love to hear your suggestions.
notes and reading suggestions:
I wrote about making mom friends for Romper. My favorite thing I learned? In basically every social interaction with a stranger or acquaintance, “you are liked more than you know.” (It’s science! Social psychologist Gillian Sandstrom says so!) I hope that encourages you to go out there and chit chat with neighbors, coworkers, folks at the grocery store. Sandstrom’s research shows that those kind of casual social connections improve happiness and overall well-being.
My article on revising a poetry manuscript, Order Out of Chaos: Revising Your Poetry Manuscript, was published in Poets & Writers back in the Nov/Dec 2020 issue, and it’s now available online. It’s got examples from a bunch of recent books I love (Tiana Clark, Camille Dungy, Emily Skaja, Cassie Pruyn, and more), and a picture of Paige Lewis’s very cute cat helping with manuscript revisions.
I’ve been trying this month to spend less time on the internet and more time with paper books and sunshine. I read and loved (loved loved loved) Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch. (Yoder’s interview with Sara Petersen in LARB is great if you’d like a little preview.) I just finished Gina Frangello’s Blow Your House Down, and I was really drawn in by its odd form and how it resists obvious narrative conventions. And I have Molly Wizenberg’s The Fixed Stars, which just came out into paperback, though I’m reading it slowly to really savor it. (And after I hit send on this, I’m headed back to the pool!)
What have you been reading? How are you doing? I’d love to hear how your writing is going, or what you’re hoping for as we head into fall. You can always reply to this email, comment below, or find me on twitter (@nancy_reddy) and instagram (@nancy.o.reddy).
I opened up that 2020 edition of Poets and Writers and was floored by your piece. I had just finished an 8 week class on creating a manuscript and learned more from your article than from the entire class. I made copies and sent it to all my writer friends.
And and and! You mentioned writing poems in a series, something that had never occurred to me. I started writing a series of poems about Persephone and Demeter. Those poems became the chapbook Every Broken Year published by Tiny Wren Lit.