Back to the Routine

Whether your job is a stay-at-home parent, an office worker, a service provider or a student heading back to college, September is a time when the sweetness of summer disappears into a predictable schedule. Unlike those glorious summer days when your time was your own and you could wander at will—both literally and in your imagination—September brings us back down to Earth, back to the reality of our various routines.

But here’s the thing—just because your body is organizing a PTA fundraiser, or adding up columns of figures for a big departmental presentation, or fielding calls at a call center or listening to professors deliver their wisdom to you in the classroom—your mind can be as free as ever.

Seriously—for your mind, it can be an endless summer. And that’s what you want to cultivate, a climate in your brain where soft breezes are always blowing, mountains or oceans are always beckoning, and you can conquer anything.

So if you went off on that vacation this summer and started a new play, novel, screenplay or story—put yourself back in the mindset that helped you to create that work. Close your eyes and remember where you were when you began writing. Where were you sitting? What were you sitting on? What were you wearing? What did you see when you looked up from the page? What sounds did you hear? What were you drinking as you wrote? What kind of snacks did you have to eat as you wrote?

I think we writers can learn a lot from our actor-cousins. Actors imagine themselves in particular places and say their lines, convey their feelings, and often they’re standing in front of a green screen! That lovely lake setting they’re supposed to be at is something a film crew will shoot at another time and their image will be placed so that they appear to be at the lake. In reality, they have to conjure up how their character would say things, what they’d feel, and convey that to the camera.

And close-ups are even more amazing. An actor looks into the camera… as if looking into her lover’s eyes. And in reality? She has a camera lens shoved in her face! If you’ve ever done any acting you know what that kind of ‘imagining’ is all about. It’s a real art.

As writers, we need to do the same thing—imagine ourselves where we need to be for our creativity to take flight. And the more specific you can be as you imagine a scene, the better. So think of that place by the lake, think of every pebble on that beach, really take yourself to the spot that you’re comfortable creating… and then take your characters on their journey.

Copyright © Diane Lake

10Sep17

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com