Bethany Henry: Writing & Wellness

Reading glamorous success stories can be so attractive and addictive. We look at brilliant musicians and say we wish we were gifted like that. We admire great art and lament we aren’t artistic. We read books, view sculptures, gawk at inventions, and marvel at math… and we think we could never do that. We think this brilliance and beauty somehow comes easily. That writers are magically born writers and the stories just burst forward effortlessly. That musicians and engineers and painters are gifted with something that makes their work simple and always free from trouble. We don’t want to think about the work that may be involved. Yeah, that’s right. It’s work. We’d like to ignore the non-glamorous parts and just think of the overnight successes, the prodigies, and the finished products. Yet most of writing is work that starts off messy. Most of it happens little by little, day by day. Even breakout success stories started somewhere. (Spoiler: it probably included a lot of work.) If we e...

If you’ve ever read much YA fiction you’ll notice that it’s pretty common for parents to be either dead or absent. There are a few contributing factors for this, but essentially it’s because in YA fiction, parents are a problem that writers need to somehow solve. The Parent Problem: The Parents Can’t Be In Control This is probably the number one parent problem in YA fiction: If the parents are present and in charge, that means that the teenage protagonist isn’t. And our protagonist needs to be the hero of the story. Alive and present parents are an issue for our stories because they could put a stop to our hero’s adventures (aka: no you can’t do that saving-the-world thing because it’s dangerous) or by taking the role of the hero themselves (aka: they are the more skilled and logical choice to fight the bad guy). Parents can also represent too much of a safety net, through which the hero knows they are never really in danger because their parents can always swoop in to save the day. We...

Let’s travel together by taking a look at some beautiful libraries and bookstores around the world! Yes, I want to visit every single one of these 🙂 Beautiful Libraries and Bookstores Around The World Prague Library, Czech Republic Image by  izoca  from  Pixabay George Peabody Library, Baltimore, Maryland, USA Image by  Falkenpost  from  Pixabay Xidan North Street, Xicheng District, Beijing, China Photo by  Chengting Xie  on  Unsplash Trinity College Library, Dublin, Ireland Image by  Rudy and Peter Skitterians  from  Pixabay Livraria Lello Bookstore, Porto, Portugal Photo by  Ivo Rainha  on  Unsplash Stuttgart City Library, Germany Photo by  Amelie & Niklas Ohlrogge  on  Unsplash Bookshop in Gurney Paragon, Penang, Malaysia Photo by  Geraldine Ng  on  Unsplash Seattle Public Library, Washington, USA Photo by  Sylvia Yang  on  Unsplash Library of the Theological F...

Today I’m outlining a case for making bad art and why that’s so important. Now I can be kind of a perfectionist by nature so this goes a bit against the grain- if you’re a perfectionist as well, just hang in there with me! It may seem silly to make bad art on purpose, but there are several reasons why is not only unavoidable but should sometimes even be encouraged. A Case For Making Bad Art 1- Bad Art Is Necessary We won’t make great (or even good!) art on our first try every time. It’s just not accurate to expect that of ourselves, even if we’ve been honing our craft for years and years. This means that as long as we are creating things, some of our art  will  be less than good. We don’t want this bad art to paralyze us, though! It’s simply a natural part of the creative process. We can all be perfectionists at times and it’s important we don’t let the fear of bad art stop us. Intentionally creating bad art can be excellent practice in letting go of perfectionist standards. 2...