Is there such a thing? Yes, there is, but it’s different for everybody. If you haven’t found your best time for writing, read more about my search for this writers’ Holy Grail
Waiting for the motivation fairy that never comes is a bad habit among many writers. I used to wait until the time was “right” for writing too. However, thanks to the mentorship of Dr McCarty, during my NIDA INVEST Fellowshiplast year, thanks to Zinsser’s books and to workshopswith Hugh Kearns, I’ve discovered that to write a lot means to write every day. It doesn’t mean writing lengthy texts daily, but every little helps when it comes to writing, too.
 |
| (c) Jano Klimas |
Research articles are the bread and butter of my day job. Publications are the currency of science. A daily writing practice in the morning helps keep up the momentum and keep my job. Besides, I enjoy writing and welcome any opportunity to translate what we, the scientists, think and do, into a more reader-friendly language of non-specialist audience.
It took me a while to discover that I am a science writer – a journalist who writes about science. Although unpaid, my science blogs cover interesting articles, conferences and trainings. These essays are difficult to write, but not as difficult as academic papers. I write them on one afternoon, early each week. Most recently, my science writing was awarded 4thplace in the 2014 Andreas McEntee Medical Writing competition.
Generating new, fiction material is the easiest of all my writings. It started with a creative, prompt-based writing course in Portland, Oregon. Since then, I tend to scribble down snippets, tidbits … anytime they surprise me. It’s good to always keep a notepad on you – you never know which of these odd lings will become your next gem short story or haiku. Being systematic about these scatterings is harder than recording them as they arrive to me from the creativity ether. My current schedule and discipline allow me to spend one evening per week connecting, expanding and elaborating on them and another evening editing the results of my brainstorming. I’d love to do more of that though.