Writer, let yourself LIVE.

"I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news." –John Muir

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Welcome to The Writer’s Cottage! If you haven’t already, go back to the previous post and introduce yourself in the comments. We’ve been chatting about how we started writing, where we’re writing from, and what we’re reading. Bonus: Read through other responses to see if you find a writer or two with whom you have something in common and say hello! I’m so excited to see what this community becomes.

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On the last Friday of January I cuddled under my fluffy comforter with a sleepy cat and touched my manuscript for the last time. It was the end of our last round of edits, and it felt surreal. Do I celebrate? Do I cry? Do I really feel anything, because I’ve stared at these words so many times I’m honestly ready to be done?

And this one feels most pressing—

Do I need to start the next book now?

My view while making the very last edits on my second book. At this point my cat has been present—if not physically in my lap—for so much of my work that he is now my official writing assistant.

I have about five book proposals rolling around in my brain (and in my Word documents). I want to complete one of them, and after lots of prayer, research, and chatting with writer friends, I finally know which one I’m going to give attention to. But honestly, I’m tired. I have lots of words left in my brain—I always do; just ask my husband when he is trying to go to sleep and I can’t stop talking—but do I have any deep creative focus left?

The weird thing about being a writer is that our version of creating most often involves staring at a screen. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t feel very creatively motivating to me. It doesn’t feel grounded or poetic. It’s almost… mechanical?

In my foray into writing on Instagram (which sometimes feels like a foray into fun and sometimes feels like a foray into hell itself), I have learned that I’m supposed to be a machine. Post every day at the same time. Ride the waves of the algorithm. Will we show your post to even a quarter of your followers? No. You don’t make enough reels and you have certainly never danced on screen, so you’re out of luck. Sorry! I know the good people of Instagram don’t mean it to feel like this. But it does.

When we feel like we have to churn out a certain amount of work, we get churned in the process. Writers tend to put pressure on ourselves to produce at a certain level because of some shifting, invisible goal. Sometimes this happens when we start caring too much about metrics or begin to measure success in all the wrong ways. Sometimes it’s because we falsely believe that if we want to be a “real writer” we have to create all the time.

But dear writer, you are not a machine.

There’s a John Muir quote I hold dear in my writing life¹ that reads, “I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money... I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.”

I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.

Les Alpilles, Mountain Landscape near South-Reme by Vincent van Gogh

If we don’t fill our creative well, it will go dry. And if we aren’t actually living life with our wonderful Creator, how can we hope to create things that are really true, good, and beautiful? In a conversation with a writer friend I said, “Sometimes we just need to let our creative lives lie fallow for a while.” We must take space to learn, rest, and live if we want to sustain true creative work.

So yes, writers write. We stare at a screen, work under deadlines, and put down words even when they don’t seem to flow.

But we also take long rambling walks in the country. We listen to the birds and wonder at their colorful puffed chests against the winter snow. We paint, sing, and play our instruments. We read whole books of the Bible in one sitting because we can’t put it down, and we meditate on one tiny verse that holds the truth of galaxies. We watch good films and stupid movies. We read, just for fun. We are discipled and shepherded and loved primarily by Christ, and secondarily in our local church. We laugh with friends, write a haiku just for kicks, take walks under the moonlight, count the stars, eat hearty meals with family, take trips, and wash the dishes.

We need to experience our lives as they are—colorful, beautiful, sorrowful, rich.

This is the only way we can actually write. Because when we go back to our white screens and blinking cursors, we have to fill that void with color. Stories. Feelings. Images. Passion. Smells. Nostalgia. Life.

Writer, you need to live. You are not a machine. You are God’s little poem, perfectly poised for the good works he has set before you. You are a creator made in the image of our Creator.

So yes, I am working on my next proposal. But I am doing it my way, on my own timeline, in the middle of a vibrant life. Is there any other way to write? I haven’t found it yet.

Prompts for the week!

Write for five minutes about a conversation with your dental hygienist, no matter how boring.

Write for five minutes about the way you feel when you look out the window of an airplane, or any airplane-related story you might have.

Read Ecclesiastes 1:1–11. What does this passage mean, and what cyclical patterns—beautiful or frustrating—do you see in your life?

If you share your responses to these prompts, I want to read them! Tag me on Substack or on Instagram @alicialynnhamilton. Also, if you share your response publicly, put the link in the comments so we as a community can cheer one another on!

Cultivating Community

Since writing is a mostly solitary activity, let’s create some connections. Join me in the comments and tell us:

• What fills your creative well?

• Is there a time in your writing life you have felt like a machine or fallen into the trap of writing for metrics?

• How would you define true success in your writing life?

• How are you LIVING this week? (See my answer below!)

Bonus: Read through the comments and take a moment to respond to a few of your fellow writers! It takes all of us to build a community.🏡

How I’m living this week: I’m listening to The Two Towers on audiobook, meeting up with some wonderful college girls for discipleship at the coffee shop downtown, and hanging out with my friend and her very adorable baby!

Other places to connect:

• Instagram

• My book! Eternity in Our Hearts: How the Wisdom of Ecclesiastes Frees Us to a Richer Reality

• My other Substack: A Creative Connection

1. Although this quote is certainly not about writing and I am taking it out of its original context, I find that the general principle resonates in my writing life and I love it.