Totally Useful Tips #1

Welcome to a new segment on this here thingamabob!  I’m calling it Totally Useful Tips.  The joke is that these tips aren’t useful in the slightest.  At least, maybe to you.  To me, they sometimes work.

So now why start this new segment?  ‘Cause I needed some totally useful tips myself.  You see, I’ve been in a rut lately where I feel like my writing is subpar.  Uh, subpar in the realms of “Holy Hell, Zack, that’s pretty emo.”  Or “Holy Hell, Zack, that sucks.”  Or “Holy Hell, Zack, stop talking to yourself in the third person.”

That kind of stuff.

Ideas come to me, but they’re all horrible upon horrible.  I’ve deleted pages upon pages of words that I have deemed unworthy.  And that’s all within the past few weeks.  That’s pretty bad.  And I’m not looking for something beautiful or amazing or life changing either.  I’m just looking for something not completely horrible.

So here’s 3 Totally Useful Tips for getting over this rut.

1 – Don’t stop writing.

Like, this is pretty obvious, right?  If you stop writing, and stop doing your craft, then what’s stopping you from getting over this rut?  So keep on writing, keep on writing.  Don’t stop.  Can’t stop.  Write those horrible words.  Write the teenage emotional crap that would make any thirteen year old say “that’s a bit much.”  Then hide it away so no one reads it, cause let’s face it, while we want to support you no one wants to read that crap.

2 – Don’t stop writing.  Er, Get Inspired.

Talk a walk.  Run.  Hike.  Jog.  Do a sport.  Do the sport thing.  I don’t know why I’m listing things that I don’t do, but do something like those things.  Get your Jesus on.  Art all over the place.  Watch a good movie.  Be with people who inspire you.  Spend time with friends.  Read a good book or two (or three or five or ten, I’m not gonna judge).  Listen to some chill music.  Listen to pumping music.  Stir your brain about with new and interesting and invigorating sensations.  Stir your brain about with old and familiar and memorable sensations.  Point is, by taking you mind off of writing for a bit and getting yourself all shooken up with different things can jog the head.

3 – Don’t stop writing.  Er, Don’t beat yourself up.

Unless they are some sort of proverbial god at writing, everyone gets those bad days at writing.  Or bad stretches of writing.  It’s part of stretching yourself and learning to be your best.  So don’t hurt yourself over something like that.  Recognize that all the greats go through this.  If they can do it, despite all the odds, you can to.  So if everything is poop right now, then everything is poop.  Eventually, it won’t be.  And until then, that’s alright.  Hmmm, it’s actually a really zen way of looking at things.

Bonus 4 – Don’t stop writing.

I joke and I jest, but at the end of the day this is all you can do.  What I wrote above are simple enough things.  It’s like hearing a sermon about something you learned at Sunday School when you were like eight, and therefore you know it all so you can snooze through it.  WRONG!!!!  You might have known about little Paulie on the road and he meets Jesus.  But you don’t know about Paul encountering God.  Just cause you know something then doesn’t mean you can’t relearn and reinforce those pathways and brain ways in your adult life.  So take the advice with a grain of salt.  Just ‘cause it’s simple and stupid and totally useful doesn’t mean you can’t still learn from it.

So get out there and get writing.  Or crafting.  Or whatever it is that you do to get your thang on.