The Perk of a Side Writing Project

If you took a brief glimpse at my life, you would see that I’m the kind of person who wears many hats. In fact, when I describe all the facets to my day job, I usually just end up calling myself a bridge, because I cross over into several different areas. I usually have an audiobook I’m listening to, a hard copy book I’m reading, and a digital book I’m reading (they are never similar in story though).

Yet, for some reason I thought I could only write one thing at a time. And that project I’ve been working on has been a beast. Life hasn’t helped, but it has taken me longer to draft this novel than anything I’ve written before. I keep trying, I’ll get 500 words one week, maybe that the next, but really, the thought of writing it feels too big. I have told myself, of course, that this means it’s the story I’m supposed to write, but it got to the point where writing at all was daunting.

Dear writer? That’s not a good place to be.

This book isn’t under contract. I don’t have a deadline for it. If I did, I’d probably push through because I hate letting people down.

I tried imposing my own deadlines, but that didn’t help. And a backhanded slap from my mental health during all of this did me absolutely no favors.

So, instead, I started researching, you know, on Pinterest. Because I like to dabble in a little bit of magical realism, I glanced through lores and myths, through the meaning and healings of different times of days, of crystals, of various herbs. I let myself imagine a story with something like that in them, saved some ideas to my secret research board, where ideas are safe to marinate without expectation or judgment.

One idea, in particular, kept visiting, inspired by a place I visited in Europe last year. There was finally enough that I wanted to put pen to paper, to see if I had a character or a setting, which are the two elements that usually come first in stories for me. And soon enough, I had a paragraph. Then two. Then an epiphany of where the story could really start, and where it could maybe go.

This is my new treehouse story. 

You see, when I was younger, I would climb trees during my free time, always taking a little snack and a book with me. In that tree, I could forget about the real world and get lost in a story. I never had a proper treehouse (I still covet the one in Swiss Family Robinson), but that idea of a place where I can go to get lost in a story allows me to get the body and the brain writing again.

This is a lot like how I warmed up for practicing the piano – there were the pieces that got the fingers loosened up, that signaled to the mind that it was time to make music. Having a side project that is fun and developmental lets the fingers and brain transition into writer mode, and, for a while, the fun that was started when I was playing with my treehouse story trickles into the one I need to finish. This kind of exercise is quite a bit like visual artists who carry a sketch pad everywhere – it’s a low-cost way to nurture their creativity. Playing with our art allows us to better tap into our art.

Obviously, I do NOT recommend developing a treehouse story to the point where it’s at the same hard-to-write part as the other story. That’s a dangerous practice (and another article all of its own).