Finding Our Way to Writing in the New Year

To welcome in 2016,  my fellow TeachingAuthors and I wish to gift our readers with singular items and opportunities meant to keep everyone writing.

My gift for this brand new year of endless possibilities?

Shaun Levin’s Writing Map MY WRITING LIFE.

I first discovered these handy, interactive, pocket-sized writing prompts and exercises inside my SCBWI Europolitan Conference folder last April in Amsterdam.

Since then, I’ve done my due diligence in checking out the complete series of WRITE AROUND TOWN MAPS,  thanks, fortuitously, to their U.S. availability at THE LOOKING GLASS  book store in Oak Park, Illinois. 

Themed by elements of narrative, settings, occasion and emotion, each of the 15 maps lives up to its billing – i.e. “portable, practical, inspiring.”

I’ve showcased MY WRITING LIFE because IMHO, it’s the perfect map to help you find your way to writing – as well as – keep you writing once you’ve learned what’s driving you.

Last January, in my post titled HAPPY DRIVING, I encouraged readers to discover their writing Wants and Needs.

We do the same for our characters, I shared, so we can tell their stories well.  We must do so for ourselves so we can keep on telling the writer’s story we’re living.

In truth, though, that wasn’t the whole picture; knowing the Want, and even better, the Need, doesn’t do the job for our characters or us.

If we’re to tell our stories true – either those we’re writing or the writer’s story we’re living, we need to know the WHY behind the WHAT.

MY WRITING LIFE can help all of us do just that, allowing a closer look at various elements of the writing life: commitment, community, setting, subject matter.

We’re to think of the map’s questions as coming from someone who loves us, someone who is interested in how and why we write.

What does writing mean to you?

Who are your writing friends and allies?

Who has encouraged you?

What kind of writer are you?

Maps provide information, all in the name of navigation.


 

Here’s to 2016 and again, Happy Driving! May MY WRITING LIFE help you write happily ever after!

Esther Hershenhorn

P.S.

Speaking of maps and writing, check out the Landgrove Inn in beautiful Landgrove, Vermont where I’m honored to be continuing Barbara Seuling’s Manuscript Workshop July 10-15.

A Writing Map will sit inside each writer’s workshop folder. :)