Bethany Henry: Writing & Wellness

Today I’m thrilled to be guest posting over at Fiction University. I love Fiction University because of their huge (huge!) wealth of information and the encouraging support they offer writers. They are a great first stop when I have a writing question. My guest post is talking about  7 Ways To Deal With Burnout . Beyond just a “bad day” or “writer’s block,” burnout can describe a significant period of emotional and physical distress. It is important to know how to prevent burnout, and also how to handle it when it strikes. So check out  my post  and remember to practice some  self-care  today! Originally published July 31, 2020 on Bethany-Henry. com.

It’s summer and it’s time to practice some creativity play! Sometimes writing is work. Art can be work. There’s a myth about the creative person who is “living the dream” and always enjoying every moment of what they do- but in real life there is always some measure of toil involved. There are mindless tasks, tough decisions, and times when we don’t want to keep going. There are goals and deadlines that we push ourselves towards. And these goals are important! They help us finish our stories and achieve our dreams. But sometimes it’s nice to just take some time to play. It’s important to remember the joy in our work, the delight found in art, and the curiosity that fuels our writing. This play is a form of self-care that keeps us healthy both body and soul. And it’s important to fill our creative wells so that we can be pouring it back into our creativity. 8 Ways To Practice Creativity Play 1- Make Bad Art This is a creativity prompt from Austin Kleon...

Having too many story ideas seems like a weird problem to have. Yet it can sometimes be just as difficult as having no ideas at all! The Problem of Too Many Story Ideas Having too many story ideas is distracting. Every new idea is shiny. It’s interesting to explore new things and soon we’ve lose interest in what we’re working on- those old ideas are so boring at this point! This leaves us never focusing on any one project long enough to finish it. This is a big problem. Having too many story ideas is also confusing. We have so many ideas it’s hard to know which idea is best or how to possibly pick just one to write about. We don’t want to neglect or throw away ideas that have merit- but how do we know which ideas have merit? How do we know if we’re picking the best ideas? What if we spend all our time on a bad idea? This is overwhelming. Ideas are great and we want to train ourselves to always be curious, to ask why, to look closely, to imagine “what if” and dream weird dreams. But we ...

“What what you know” is classic writer advice passed back and forth on the internet and in writing groups. But what does it actually mean to write what you know? Should all of our characters be exactly like us? No. No, they should not. And what about fantasy novels? How can we write about things that are, by definition, not real? Obviously “write what you know” can’t be taken completely literally. Writing What We Know- The Obvious The most straightforward way of writing what we know is probably a memoir or a story based on our personal experiences. In this case we are literally writing about something we personally have seen and lived. This also applies to How To books stemming from our expertise in various fields, etc. These books are based on the premise that we are sharing what we know with other people. Writing What We Know- Looking Deeper Beyond the straightforward sharing of knowledge above, sometimes writing what we know means looking deeper beneath the surface. There are ma...