How to Find a Writing Practice that Works for You (and recognize it will change over time!)

I laughed out loud this morning when I read an excerpt from yesterday’s writing practice. I wrote:

♡ Today I want to get over the hurdle of fear, preferably without smacking my face, my ass or my thighs on the way down.

How can I get more honest than that?

For years I wrote in the style of Julia Cameron’s morning pages, but after more than a decade of this practice, I needed to try something new so I borrowed from poet Billy Collins to include a list of 20 things I did the day before.

This works on many levels AND I have gone on to modify this practice more.

Playfully experiment with different types of writing practice rather than giving up entirely.

I happily experimented my way into a writing practice that collects images, sensory observations and day to day using Collins “Yesterday I” with the first five entries honoring “what I did” and the rest following a combination of sensory prompts, listing my desires and also noting what I read (perhaps a good quote or two among blogs, books, etc) and more.

I put my list into a monthly google doc. Everyday when I start working it is the first task. I take each prompt and respond five times to each.

My current, everyday writing practice foundation looks like this:

Here is what my current daily prompt currently looks like.

Yesterday I (action)
^ Yesterday I felt
Yesterday I saw
𝅘𝅥𝅲 Yesterday I heard
🕮 Yesterday I read
⇌↪Yesterday I smelled
♡ Today I want

☆ Today I affirm (and I write an affirmation or affirmative statement. Sometime I use scripture or modify quotes, too.)

╳ Any a-ha’s? (More often than not I don’t have anything to list but when I do, this is a beneficial category. I also think it helps to awaken my subconscious mind to remember and bring them to the front of my brain instead of getting stuck in minutia.)

By the way, I did not get physically injured when I climbed over the hurdle of fear. If anything I rose higher than I might have expected.

I may challenge myself to write what I want to do with fear on a more regular basis!

I know not everyone believes in writing daily or even regularly. For me, it works.

Most importantly when the practice I was using stopped working, I circled back and experimented to find what worked better for me.

Right now I have two distinctive, short (takes less than 15 minutes) writing practices – the one you are reading here and #rolloverandwrite – which is a brief before sleep write (sometimes literally a scribbled sentence) and then soon after awakening I roll over while still in bed and pick up my notebook instead of my phone.

In the latter practice, I have gotten much better at remembering my dreams AND I tune into a lot more of my personal wisdom I didn’t know was there that I use in my work with coaching clients, my blogging, my relationships and even in my social media planning.

How regularly do you write?

Julie JordanScott is a multipassionate creative who delights in inviting others into their own fullhearted, artistic experience via her creativity coaching individually or in groups, courses and workshops. To receive inspiring content and videos weekly and find out more about Coaching, Courses, Challenges and what’s going on in the Creative Life Midwife world? Subscribe here:

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