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The Writing Life, ca. 2014 by Victoria Moran

In the past few weeks, three different people have written to me innocently asking how I write, not realizing that they were asking for a treatise on my life’s work and my life’s purpose. I told them that I’d do a blog post about writing. Although the topic isn’t strictly vegan, it is interesting to note that at this time in history when print media are, if not on their last legs, at least not experiencing a heyday, vegan books are being published at a steady clip and selling well enough to keep the momentum going. New cookbooks seem to come out weekly, along with nonfiction titles and the occasional fiction book with a vegan message or protagonist. (The memoir, The Dogs Were Rescued and So Was I, by NY Times bestselling author, Teresa Rhyne, describes how her dogs turned her vegan.)

main street vegan | Victoria Moran

If you want to write for your own purposes, write. If you want to write for a living, write, but keep some other income coming in. The Internet era has cheapened the value of words and diminished the profession of writer. You may be able to make a go of it, but every writer I know these days writes and does something – or several somethings – else as well. Either way, schedule your time to write five or, maximum, six days a week. Enjoy. Edit. Hone. Suffer. That part is because waiting for the Muse isn’t all fun; sometimes I think she’s at a different Starbucks.

And there’s a tip in itself: in the tradition of writing teacher and author on authoring, Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones), try your hand at writing in a café. I rarely write at home. Home is the place where other things take precedence: when the beds are made, you can write. When the errands are done, you can write. When the email box is as empty as Mother Hubbard’s pantry, you can write. This is, of course, the sad yarn of never writing.

Therefore, I write in coffee shops and have done it for years. Back in Kansas City (I moved to NYC in 2000), I always wrote in independently owned cafes. I didn’t want my inspiration to arise in a corporate setting. I’ve become more pragmatic since my New York conversion. Starbucks are everywhere and they let you sit for hours with their WiFi and, if you can claim a lucky table, an electrical outlet, too. While some people prefer to write in monastic seclusion, I like to write with life and energy teeming around me. I translate those sights and sounds into what I’m writing. It’s not a direct correlation, e.g., I won’t write: “A woman wearing a purple hat just walked by,” but because she was self-confident and gutsy and celebratory enough to wear a purple hat, the piece or the page or the chapter I’m working on becomes more confident, courageous, and festive.

I write, most the time, in the mornings. My writing mentor, Jerrold Mundis (www.unblock.org), tells his protégés, “You get your best stuff in the morning. If you need breakfast, eat. If you do a spiritual practice, tend to that. But don’t do one other thing before you write.” I disobey somewhat in that I go to the gym first because I know myself: I could conceivably find excuses for not writing, but I could devise an encyclopedia of excuses for not going to the gym. In the sensible spirit of, “Do first what you’re most likely to blow off,” I work out, then get to my café (i.e., “satellite office”).

Once there, I write for three hours. That’s the sweet spot. Jerrold Mundis says that the human nervous system can only take four hours of writing. You can do other things during a writing day: research, proofreading, work on appendices and the bibliography, but actual writing is best kept to three or four hours.

And this needs to be non-distracted time. Email has been the enemy of my writing for the past ten years. I found programs that would keep me offline for a proscribed period, but that was no good because I needed the Internet for looking up facts. I just wanted to be blocked from email, which can take up a whole day and leave virtually nothing to show for it. I found my salvation in a program called Anti-Social (www.anti-social.cc) which automatically blocks Facebook and Twitter plus, optionally, other social networking sites and email accounts for a time you specify, up to eight hours. It’s a godsend for me and for lots of other writers, too.

The Writing Life, ca. 2014 | Victoria Moran

As precious as this discrete writing time is, I think the more important time for my writing is when I’m living my life away from the keyboard. Observation, contemplation, conversation, and reading (both for information and simply to be exposed, over and over, to wonderful storytelling and the beautiful usage of words) are essential. Going to movies, looking at art, and being out in the world where everything happens are necessary requisites for me to write. For other people, it’s time in nature or running or journaling first thing in the morning.

Whatever it is for you, this is your writer’s fuel. Without it, you’re likely to either stop writing or fuel this energy-intensive activity via unhealthy means – too much alcohol, sugar, or caffeine. It may seem that you’re doing your best work when a little tipsy or flying on espresso, but that kind of brilliance is usually a mirage. You’re attempting to tap the mysterious creative well, tune into inspiration that is really quite inexplicable. No one has ever determined where it comes from. You can’t buy access, nor force it. It shows up most reliably when you’re well-rested, alert, and writing on your schedule. For me, that’s 9:30 to 12. You know how your dog expects to eat on time and go for walks on time? Your creativity is a lot like your dog. If you write from 9:30 to 12 (or whatever time your choose), that’s when the ideas will start to pop. Sometimes you’ll sit down and plug in your laptop while thinking, “I don’t have anything to say.” But once you’re in the chair and you’ve pulled up Word or Pages, the ideas may well come gushing in. This is the time you’ve allotted for them and they know it.

One of the people who wrote asking for information on my process wanted to know how I came up with the concept of “Lucky Charms,” practical tips at the end of each chapter in my 2009 book, Living a Charmed Life.

Living a Charmed LIfe

I don’t remember specifically, but like so many other small things that make a book or any piece of writing memorable, the idea popped up when my brain put together the concept of “tips” with the book’s title. The pun of the cereal name just made it a little more fun.

And that’s what this is about really. Even if you’re writing on a serious topic, you have to have fun with weaving the words and telling the tale. If words aren’t magical to you, what is? Music? Movement? Visual arts? Cooking? There are many way to be creative and express your deepest instinct to, in my opinion, do what God does: make something that wasn’t here before. Writing is a delectable way to do this if it’s words that make you salivate as your think of them and leave you satisfied as they fall from your pen or appear on your screen. And if your words can carry a message of uplift or compassion or sanity or humor, you get some extra credit.

Victoria Moran has been writing all her life and started doing so professionally at age 14 when she became a stringer for a teen magazine. Her 12th book, The Good Karma Diet: Eat Gently, Feel Amazing, Age in Slow Motion, will be published by RandomHousePenguin in the spring of 2015. She is also the co-writer of Miss Liberty, a family feature film about a fictional cow who escapes from a slaughterhouse, scheduled to go into production late next year. Victoria hosts the weekly Main Street Vegan radio show/podcast on Unity Online Radio. The recent episode with prolific author Gene Stone was, in part, about the writing process and the writing life. Listen to that episode here.

5 thoughts on “The Writing Life, ca. 2014 by Victoria Moran”

  1. I am always so impressed Victoria by what you write and how you write it. So interesting to read about your process. I am eagerly awaiting the release of The Good Karma Diet.

  2. Thanks for the mention! Loved the article too. I’m a late- night at home writer myself, with a mix of week long writing retreats away from home whenever I can. I’ve never been able to concentrate enough in a coffee shop. I so admire you for that–among many other things!

  3. Thank you for the post Victoria! I’m really grateful for you taking the time to write it. It’s exactly what I needed. Sometimes the process of writing seems to be so illusive. I guess it’s like anything creative – you never really know how it’s done until it’s done. All you can do is to trust the process, show up to be a channel for God’s creativity. There are similarities between writers of course but almost everyone has something specific about the process, some details that help them be creative on a regular basis, like filling the creative well exploring life or having time dedicated only to writing without distractions.
    Thank you for the post again and answering my question about Lucky Charms 🙂

  4. Love this article, and the photos, too! I would never have thought it possible to write in a coffee shop, but I recently ran into Chris Paolini, and he does the same thing these days.

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