Bethany Henry: Writing & Wellness

There are endless writing lessons for us to learn. As writers we are constantly practicing our writing, improving our stories, and honing our craft. The entire world is our teacher if we allow it to be! As  Sivananda Saraswati  said: “This world is your best teacher. There is a lesson in everything.” It can certainly be true that some of our greatest lessons can come from unlikely sources!  We can all be learning wherever we happen to be at in life. H aving two young girls is a big part of the adventure that is my life these days so I thought I’d share some of that with you all today 🙂 Priorities There are countless things I’ve been learning (or trying to learn!) in my life these days but most of them are related to the concept of priorities.  A priority is when we make a judgement call over what is most important and  is defined as  “something given or meriting attention before competing alternatives.” There are several ways this plays out in our lives an...

Being a writer is a strange and confusing identity. Sometimes writing is a hobby, sometimes it’s a lifestyle, and sometimes it’s something that sucks up all of our time and makes us frustrated. There are some days we love it and there are days we wonder why we ever started. Being a writer is sometimes described as a mysterious calling that is too complex to understand. But how can we be writers if we don’t even understand what being a writer means? Today we’re going to dig deeper into some writing myths and take a look at the truth of what it really means to be a writer. Writing Myth 1: Writers Are Inspired By A Mysterious Muse Ever hear about a writer who wrote an entire bestselling book in a weekend because they “felt inspired?” Ever hear of writers waiting for “the muse to strike” or waiting until “the creative juices are flowing” in order to write? There’s a romanticized notion that writers will be driven to create by impulses that are beyond their control. That the writers are the...

So you’ve finished the first draft of your story-  Congratulations!! That is a very big deal . No matter what shape your story is in, I’m so proud of you! Getting those words down on a page and creating the start of your story is a huge accomplishment. Are you feeling excited? Proud? A bit exhausted and possibly delirious? Finishing drafts is always a bit bittersweet for me- I feel successful and relieved to have completed my project but it’s usually mixed with fear of what comes next and some anxiety that what I’ve written won’t be good enough. Let’s not get bogged down by this fear and anxiety. Whether our draft is great or lousy, full length or barely there, dynamic, flat, or completely scattered- we completed our draft! And that’s a win, my friends 🙂 So now that we’ve finished our first draft… what’s next? First of all we should double check (triple check?) that we’ve saved our writing in a safe place. Maybe this goes without saying… but I’ll say it anyway because it’s an impo...

Sometimes we need to throw away our plans and forget our goals in order to dream. That hurt a bit even to write because I’m such a compulsive goal setter. I love having checklists and then crossing things off when I’m done. (Anyone else out there with me??) After all, goals are great! Goals are important! They tell us where we want to go and give us a plan on how to get there. I like how they help us break problems down into manageable pieces and give us deadlines to keep us from procrastinating.  Studies have shown  how having goals helps to increase productivity. My perfectionist nature does well with having orderly lists that tell me what to do next. But sometimes life isn’t orderly. And while goals can be enormously helpful, they can also have a dangerous side. 1. When we’re focused on our pre-made plans we can overlook exciting new possibilities and opportunities. It can be incredibly useful to have tunnel vision in regards to our plans at times.  I just need to...

There are a lot of good, great, and fabulous things we could be doing and sometimes it’s hard to decide just where to invest our time. We could be playing frisbee! Learning French! Cuddling puppies! Volunteering! Making new friends! It can be a slippery slope between being engaged and being exhausted. It’s tricky to know what’s best especially when all the options can look so good. And it’s hard to know when to say “enough” when it’s tempting to try to do it all. The “Fear Of Missing Out” has become such a thing these days that it’s become its own word and included in the Oxford Dictionary:  FOMO .  We don’t want to miss any of the fun, we’re anxious others may be doing cooler things than we are, and we certainly don’t want to be sitting at home alone doing nothing. So we sign up for everything, triple book every weekend, and rarely dark en the doors of our own homes. Sound familiar? I feel tired just thinking about it. Sometimes we don’t even want to be signing up for all of ...