Inspiring resources to keep you creative and connected!
Here’s a round up of what I’ve enjoyed and shared this week on various social platforms.
This week I focus on self-care and productivity especially for writers and creatives. It’s been on my mind as I’ve just been diagnosed with osteo-arthritis in my right hand after experiencing some pain for a while. It’s made me more aware of the need for practical strategies for self-care and the creative long-haul.
Here are some recent and valued resources to help in this space as well as some other thoughts and experiences around self-care.
Podcasts on self-care
Dictation has been suggested to me by a number of people as a self-care practice for writing. So it was interesting to listen to this week’s podcast on The Creative Penn:
How To Use Dictation To Write Faster And Stay Healthy With Scott Baker.
The podcast discusses two key benefits of dictation with tools such as Dragon: firstly, speed and increasing word count and words per hour and secondly, as a strategy if you have an injury or you’re suffering from RSI. Mindset, process and habit also emerge as key issues and especially the advantages of treating dictation as a productivity tool. The podcast also covers practical aspects of dictation: how to focus on dictation whilst also plotting and working on ideas; the need for practice; and the technical aspects of how Dragon learns how you write.
I haven’t tried dictation yet but I think it might be time to give it a go! I’d welcome any comments on your experiences of using dictation tools to increase productivity or manage injury whilst writing. Scott Baker also has an book on Dictation which I’ve purchased. It’s not expensive and looks a good investment for learning about this skill.
How to Dictate your Book with Monica Leonelle is an earlier Creative Penn podcast on dictation which you might find interesting.
Self-care and Productivity for Authors with Ellen Bard is also a fabulous listen on self-care including the pomodoro technique, morning pages, working as a digital nomad and compassion as a self-care practice.
Books and reading notes
I’ve been enjoying the memoir, Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton which is about a tough journey to self-care and self-love. I’m nearly finished that book and looking forward to diving into the other books on my current to-be read pile as I featured on Instagram this week as part of the #mywritinglife series:
Sometimes all that reading we want to get done can put its own pressure on us! Especially as writers, it is part of our job to be reading but it can be a challenge to get as much reading done as we desire.
This Creative and Connected weekly post is helping me with my awareness and accountability on my reading practices. Self-care wise, I have been mixing up my reading strategies to include hard copy, ebook and audiobook as a way of taking the pressure off and getting more reading done. This seems to be working generally with audiobooks helping to make use of long hours in the car.
How are you making time to get those all important books read? And how do you manage the accountability – if that helps you?
As I work on finalising my e-book ‘The 36 Books that shaped my story’, I’ve really been thinking deeply about reading and its role in creativity and influence and can’t wait to share these thoughts with you.
Make sure you sign up to the Quiet Writing email list so that you can receive the ebook once available. The Quiet Writing newsletter – Notes from the Beach – will be winging its way out also this weekend so would love to chat more personally to you. Just pop your email in the box on this page and you will receive both!
Blog/Twitter/Instagram posts and interactions:
There have been some interesting blog posts on self-care recently :
In What are the Four Golden Rules of Self-Care, Dr Monifa S. Seawell reminds us that self-care is not always about indulgence and adding things to our lives; it can be also about eliminating people, practices and things that might be toxic. She also says that it’s not about comparison:
Your self-care practice should be as individual and as unique as you are, so if you are comparing how your self-care routine matches up to others, just, stop it.
In 6 Ways to Weave Self-Care into your Workday, Amy Jen Su reminds us that:
At the heart of self-care is your relationship and connection to self. As part of your job, it means that you’re attuned to and understand what you need to be your most constructive, effective, and authentic self. Therefore, rather than narrowly defining self-care as just physical health (which is an important piece of the equation), we need to pay attention to a wider set of criteria, including care of the mind, emotions, relationships, environment, time, and resources.
This is valuable advice and my learning about self-care has included this notion that it has a wide spectrum. This post also provides practical tips for noticing when you’ve slipped out of self-care mode.
My self-care activities
For me, self-care includes finding time to exercise and enjoy the environment where I live. It was such a pleasure recently to walk to Curracurrang in the nearby Royal National Park in Sydney. There were whales off the coast – breeching and rolling and blowing off some steam. And there were beautiful vistas of ocean, waterfall and bush flowers. I shared some of the bush flowers on Instagram:
Here’s another shot from just off the coast by a beautiful waterfall looking back towards the ocean through the trees.
Working with intuition is also an important part of my self-care. I have posted my Tarot Narratives on Instagram every day this month. This intuitive work with tarot and oracle cards and linking them with books (reading +reading!) has become a part of a deep and focused morning routine like meditation and journaling. It calms me and connects me creatively to intuition and to the books and texts in my experience. This type of activity is about self-care as much as anything. Especially for introverts who need that deep focused me time in silence to recharge, just making this space in our days is an act of self-care.
So how do you find that deep focused quiet type of self-care activity?
My thanks for all the engagement and feedback on Tarot Narratives. My plan is to place them on the Quiet Writing blog with a specific category so they can be easily located and referenced as a resource. And I plan to continue each day! As always, I welcome your feedback.
Creative and Connected is a regular post each Friday – previous posts below. I hope you enjoy it – again, I would love any feedback via social media or comments and let me know what you are enjoying too.
Have a fabulous creative weekend!
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You might also enjoy:
6 Inspiring Podcasts for Creatives and Book Lovers
Personality, story and Introverted Intuition
Shining a quiet light – working the gifts of introversion
