Radvent: Writing

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” 
~William Wordsworth

Last weekend I visited Piccolo Theatre’s Holiday Panto (ends tomorrow, December 17). Jessica Puller did a fabulous job writing Space Wars. I thought it would be a Star Wars vs. Star Trek type show, but the geekery was far better than that. This review gives a good synopsis.

I proofread a script for a roommate once and have such admiration for scriptwriters. All the nitty-gritty of how people open a door, which way they face etc. takes a lot of patience I think. My training has been all about cutting text where possible and avoiding redundancy (thanks Ms. Fusco and Dr. Schiff!), but in a script all that detail is necessary.

Princess Lasertron’s Radvent on Writing is quite insightful.

Image re-blogged with permission from Princess Lasertron

This March I read my old diaries, all 30 of them (in three languages), and found that I had some very insightful perspectives. I keep a quote book where I jot down good passages from library books, and ended up quoting my 16-year-old self in there quite a bit!

Writing has always been a part of me, no matter how many times I had to relearn how to write as we moved from country to country. I made up stories in my head all the time. My cousin and I were collaborators on a few ‘romance novels’ in our teenage years. We even drew blueprints of the farm on which we would live happily ever after with our handsome husbands (the boys we swooned over at the time).

Our Barbie dolls had a lively correspondence too!

Writing is very therapeutic for me. I find that when I haven’t journaled or blogged for a few days my thoughts are muddled and darker. As Princess Lasertron states, writing gives your ideas form. It also helps process events and experiences.

To-do lists give my days structure and help me cluster errands together so I don’t waste gas or muscle-energy running out several times a day or in different directions. I’m not as scatterbrained when I jot down mundane tasks and my days feel more productive as I check things off.

There have been times, both when writing in a journal or when writing to a friend, that I felt the message didn’t come from me but from the universe/a higher power. I have been told that my correspondence has arrived at times where people needed the message they read in my pages (now e-mail). I firmly believe that we can find messages like that on a daily basis. I even played with recognizing those messages on a recent outing.

Here are two tips for holiday-card writing. Instead of the usual holiday and new year’s wishes, focus on the recipient a little more:

1. Thank the recipient for something they did for you this year.
2. Mention a trait or experience that you admire them for.

The gift of appreciation carries much further than any gift card ever will.

You can see my holiday cards here.