Writing Diets

Hello, Spring time! Breathe that clean, fresh air.

The longer days signal it's time to exchange parkas and mukluks for exercise shorts and sneakers. We hit the fitness trail with gusto, but unless we eat healthy, we won’t make the long haul.

Writing is much the same. New ideas bubble through our heads tempting us to haul over 50,000 words with vim and vigor. A time for new beginnings and new starts. Getting fingers and brains in shape.

Thinking about shedding a few pounds and cleaning out some cobwebs? Let’s see how our writing diets compare with our weight loss plans.

Wilstar's Low Carb Pavilion

Let's start with the perennial favorite. Stick to meat and use side dishes sparingly -- avoid dessert at all cost! This is an acceptable weight loss plan as long as the dieter doesn't exceed the suggested length of time. A couple of weeks at max. But during those weeks, your effort is concentrated and dogged, tossing all comfort foods and sweet rewards to the wind until you reach your goal. Then, with common sense and prayer, you begin sprinkling in all the starchy staples and sweet temptations until a happy medium is reached.

Does this remind you of sprinting through a rough draft? I applaud all the capable writers that can sit down and pound out a rough draft -- bare bones, unadorned meat -- and reach their goal of committing their ideas and concepts to paper. Slim, trim, and totally factual, this rough draft is the core, the skeleton, waiting for garnishment. A fine baseline. Then, with a critical eye, the writer eases in a bit of introspection, sprinkles in humor and tears, slices up some happy, intimate moments, plops a glob of whipped cream on top and proclaims it a size perfect.

Diet Tips or How To Lose Weight With a Spreadsheet and a Web Site

Here's an interesting web site I stumbled across as I was searching for diet plans. Very logical, very precise. It uses a spreadsheet to record progress. It breaks down dieting into chewable pieces. You track your food consumption and eat fewer calories, weigh yourself daily but don't obsess over it, learn the difference between *not hungry* and *full*.

A comparable writing diet would appeal to the systematic thinker in our long distance writers. Much like training for a cross-country run complete with terrain changes and level plateaus, our long distance writer calculates the best method of action, maps out the course, and records their progress. Spreadsheets help keep information organized. Columns and rows, a neat, symetrical package, easy to read, follow and understand. Unfortunately, spreadsheets give me the hives. This isn't the diet for me, but if you gravitate toward the orderly and precise, this might be the training program for you.

Weight Loss Wand

If you click on this site, you see a plethora of diet suggestions, how they work, and what you can expect. This specific link takes you to the diet pill page. Ahh, diet pills. The proverbial answer to prayers. Pop one pill and you'll be svelte before you know it. Want to stop eating? Want to flush unwanted fat from unsightly love handles? Want to rev up your metabolism and burn calories like a speed boat while you sleep? Does it work? Or course it does! The experts say so. Besides, they wouldn't run TV ads or create a web site the claims weren't true. Would they?

Warning lights blaze around this diet for the newbie writer. Not all critique groups are created equal. When I first started my Great American Novel, I was so excited to find like minded people who aspired to be published, I drank in all the words of wisdom these icons spewed. Writers who'd been creating much longer than I could grasp. They wore pins, buttons and nametags from conferences I'd never heard of, coming each week to our group with the latest and greatest techniques and methods guaranteed to get them published. These well-meaning mentors filled my head with new ideas and bled purple ink across my 10 pages. Much like the hazard of diet pills messing up your metabolism, these haphazard comments and styles peppering my manuscript pages destroyed my voice. It took me years to rediscover the joys of writing and recapture the talent the Lord had gifted to me.

Moderation is the key to healthy living and healthy writing. Much like the wise food choices we make for healthy living, we must also make sound choices for writing careers. Listen to trends, but be discerning. Live the book you're writing. Get excited!

Spring is upon us. Get out and smell the lilacs. Go to the market and buy some fruit.

Kick your shoes off and run through new grass.

Start a new exercise plan.

Start a new story.

Remember to balance your life in all you do. Ask the Lord to show you your path. Afterall, He's the One that planted the original garden : )

Blessings to you!!

-audra