Create Your Own Writing Practice

How Slow Living and Journaling can provide the backbone to your Writing Practice...

This voiceover is an audio version of my Slow Sunday Letter below. It is unedited, so may have some stutters, imperfections, and background noise. I hope you enjoy listening to it anyway!

Welcome to Generosity of Spirit, a gentle community exploring all aspects of Slow & Gentle Living. We also get cosy with our bookish chats & I share insights into living a creative life. You are so welcome here, grab a cuppa & stay a while …

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” William Wordsworth

Welcome back to another Slow Sunday Letter! I hope you have had a slow and gentle week.

This is our first official instalment of my new feature A Writer’s Life - although there are a few more letters already published on this topic, if you would like to read more (I’ll include the links at the bottom of this post!). A Writer’s Life will be a monthly feature and will follow Book Lover’s Chat. A Writer’s Life is going to explore all the ways we can shape our own writing life! I hope it will serve as inspiration, but also a shared space where we can come together, and exchange ideas and insights into how we can bring writing into our lives.

So, grab a cuppa and get cosy and today we’ll create the building blocks for our writing practice together …

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“I Want To Write Because …”

This week I want to explore how you can create your own writing practice, and how you can find time to create a writing routine that works for you. I think a good starting point before we dive in, is to think about why we write …

My answer …

I want to write because our words are everything, and when I'm writing I have a quiet power that I'm addicted to … I want to write because it gifts me with more peace, calm and focus than I can ever hope to achieve without it.

This year I have been committed to making my writing a priority, and trying to create my own writing practice. Writing has always been an important part of my life, but something that had fallen by the wayside when my anxiety was high, and I met a creative/writer’s block. However, I was determined to find my way back to writing, it had always been there for me and I wanted to feel at home in front of an empty page again.

I set myself the goal of publishing my writing again, and I just celebrated one year writing on Substack and it has felt amazing.

Substack has been a wonderful place to start writing again. It has an encouraging and inspiring community and I’ve never felt more held by the incredible writers around me. I have a real renewed creative energy.

As I have been writing more, I realised the absolute obvious … that I really needed to devote more time to my writing practice and create more structure to support my goals.

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Slow Living & Writing

Writing is at the very heart of my slow living life. It is a moment to slow down and reflect. It is a moment between you, and you. So much of my writing is personal, and then every now and then my journaling practice will springboard into an idea or a topic I want to share with others. I use a lot of these ideas to plan and create my Slow Sunday Letters.

I love sharing my writing, but I have realised committing to my own journaling and writing is just as important as committing to publishing every week on Substack.

Recently, I have started using journal prompts, and I include a lot of them in my Slow Sunday Letters, and I have really enjoyed the free flow ideas that come out as a result. This got me thinking about different ways I could expand my personal writing practice – which in turn would help inspire and encourage my published writing and any projects I may have on the go.

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Journaling Is The Backbone Of Your Practice

“Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic” - Albus Dumbledore

One of my earliest memories is of a tiny little diary with a golden padlock and miniature key that I would hide under my pillow. I would write and write, filling up book after book. I did this throughout my childhood and teenage years, until I had a box full of journals and diaries.

Before I started University, I took a GAP year to backpack through Europe with my best friend. Before I left, I had a huge clear out. Eighteen-year-old me, found my childhood and teenage diaries and journals and shuddered at their very existence. I remember delving into the pages of a few and wincing at myself – I threw them all out. I can’t remember what was written in those pages, but I can imagine tales of school crushes, teenage dramas with friends and family fall outs … I am sure written with a lot of passion and teenage angst! Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t thrown them all away and I could read them again now as a thirty-six-year-old- embarrassing or not, they were a part of me.

While the box of my old childhood journals is long gone, my love of writing and journaling has never left me. My journals are full of thoughts, dreams, wishes, pain, and little pieces of me that I have often hidden from the world. Writing helps me make sense of and organise the thoughts in my mind. I write to no one and to everyone, and when I think I don’t have the answer to something, it will form, like magic, on the page in front of me.

Journals, like books really give our minds the chance to be totally free. We can explore our thoughts and feelings and create a totally safe and non-judgmental space of our own. Journaling has taught me how to slow down, and how to listen and learn from myself. It can be done anywhere by anyone, and that’s what makes it so powerful.

If you look around your house, right now, this second… could you find an untouched notebook or journal? I know I could (but that is mostly because I have a slight addiction!).

Now is the time to put that untouched and unopened journal to good use… so go and get it! I want to introduce you to five different writing ideas and journaling prompts.

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Five Writing/Journaling Prompts

1) Get To Know Yourself

We constantly change over time, and I love that journaling can be there for you as you evolve. Using writing to regularly check in can help you learn more about your authentic self.

Sentence stems act as a perfect starting off point and provide direction to our writing practice. Try completing the following sentence stems which focus on getting to know yourself.

Sentence Stems -

• My perfect day would be…

• I feel most like myself when…

• I feel disconnected from myself when…

2) Journaling In Hard Times

Journaling in hard times can be a powerful tool for self-care and help cultivate self-compassion. Having a conversation with yourself and writing down your thoughts and feelings to understand them more clearly can really help you gain control of your emotions. If we can find a way to honour hard times and allow them to be a learning, growing experience the more equipped we are to move forward with compassion and kindness.

Journal Prompts –

• What is something that you can do today to show yourself some love and kindness?

• How are you feeling in this moment? Describe all that you are experiencing within yourself.

3) Defining Your Own Success

Journaling and writing is an opportunity to be completely free, align your thoughts and goals and increase your self awareness. Using journal prompts focused on success creates space for true insights and ideas. It is a great way to maintain a positive mindset for personal growth.

Journal Prompts -

• Write a letter to yourself, reflecting on your strengths and the progress you've made recently.

• What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

• How does success look to you in 3 years? 5 years? 10 years?

4) Finding Inspiration & Tapping Into Creativity

Regular journaling is an invaluable tool for building creativity. Letting your thoughts flow onto the page of a journal can be an inspiring and creative release, but it's also a great way to reflect on how you're feeling.

Journaling doesn’t have to just be writing, you can draw, write poems, have doodles and collages. You can use colours, and photos, and truly make your journal as unique as you.

Journal Ideas-

• Journal about a significant memory from childhood.

• Create a collage about yourself in your journal

Writing Prompt -

Pick a quote you love and use it as a writing prompt  

I love quotes, and I am often scribbling quotes down. But often that is it. What happens if you dig a little deeper?

Write down one of your favourite quotes… consider why do you love these words? Why are you drawn to this quote? What does it spark in you?

5) Free Flow

‘Free flow’ is a continuous writing technique. When you’re free writing, the goal is to let your writing flow without worrying about grammar, sentence structure, spelling, or even word choice. Just keep writing.

Journal Prompt-

Think about a situation or feeling that has been taking up space in your mind.

Write it at the top of your page or in the centre, set a timer for 10 minutes and begin by writing the first few words that come to mind. Springboard from there, try not to overthink and just write what is coming into your mind. Keep going until your timer goes off.

Slow Sunday Letters - A Writer’s Life

If you want to read more about how to shape your writer’s life take a look at some past Slow Sunday Letter’s below:

A Writer's Life

How Writing Prompts Can Help You Connect With Yourself

How To Plan Your Own Writing Retreat

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Your Writing Practice

“let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences” ― Sylvia Plath

I hope this Slow Sunday Letter and our first instalment of A Writer’s Life, has inspired you to create your own personal writing practice. If you are a writer, I hope this also serves as a reminder to not neglect your own personal practice. I’ve been firmly in the mode of sharing and publishing lately, and I know my own personal writing has been neglected, so I am looking forward to returning to it with renewed energy.

Grab a journal and experiment to create a writing practice that speaks to you. Start slowly with the prompts you enjoy the most – don’t put any pressure on yourself. Enjoy the process of exploring and gift yourself the freedom to discover your own writing practice in your own time.

Don’t worry about being perfect, your writing practice is raw and real, just like you.

I would really love to know your thoughts and if any of this resonated with you - if you feel able, please do share in the comments.

Thank you for being here,

With Light & Love

Emily xxx

My content is completely free, but you can buy me a coffee following this link!

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