To keep me sane, I write once a week, using a simple "spread" I learned from Alison Coward. I write lists by hand in an A4 hard-back notebook. I limit my time (never more than 50 minutes, often much less.) I stick to these headers.
For me, the key attitude is gentleness and inquisitiveness. I'm making a snapshot, not an encyclopedia.
My lists at 4-6 are there to resource my week ahead.
I like open-ended questions, and use them in team rounds, to help people bring their whole selves into our circle. Here are some that are useful in self-inquiry or in coaching conversations.
Conversations with my husband (and sometimes with my husband) are often contemplative. No one close to me backs away when I feel my feelings, so there's a place for them in life even when they don't land on a page.
Still, I write daily. To my daughter, sometimes to my husband in the next room. To everyone I work with. And the network of people orbiting my colleagues and our projects. To members of the study groups and communities that keep bristling with energy and opportunity. I write to move ideas forward into action, to connect, to affirm that across distance we (my reader and I) in some sense belong together.
I also write non-fiction and fiction. Most weeks I'm in one or both projects 5 or 6 days out of every 7.
'There’s nothing quite like putting in an honest effort. There’s nothing quite like giving something a fair shake, a real go.
The good news, of course, is that your “fair shake” can take any shape. There are no rules, which means you get to make the rules, which means you get to define your artist life. Define wisely, obviously, but define with whimsy.' ~ Donna-Claire Chesman on the value of making the effort to write each day.