100 Words of Writing Advice from Andrea Lani, Senior Editor and Literary Reflections Editor
“When inspiration strikes, stop everything and write. But don’t wait for inspiration, and learn to hold ideas, words, whole paragraphs in your head, just in case. Make, beg, or steal time–from your job, your hobbies, your sleep–and write, whether it’s fifteen minutes a day or an hour once a week; find the time and use it to write. Don’t worry about outcomes; just get words on the page. But do come back to those words, a day, a week, a year later, and sculpt them into a poem, an essay, a story. Finish and revise. Submit. Revise and submit again.”
– Andrea Lani, Senior Editor and Literary Reflections Editor at Literary Mama
Andrea Lani is the author of Uphill Both Ways: Hiking Toward Happiness on the Colorado Trail (Bison Books, March 2022). Her first short story appeared in Literary Mama and her essays and short stories have since been published in Orion, Spire, Willows Wept Review, The Maine Review, saltfront, and Brain, Child among others. She’s a senior editor and Literary Reflections editor at Literary Mama, a graduate of the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA Program, and a Maine Master Naturalist. She lives in Maine with her husband and sons and can be found online at www.andrealani.com.
1 reply on “100 Words of Writing Advice from Andrea Lani, Senior Editor and Literary Reflections Editor”
I love this blog post so much I want to marry it and have its babies! As that exact scenario seems logistically unlikely, I will be transcribing it onto an oversized yellow sticky note and anchoring it to my refrigerator door. The blogger’s wise counsel is simple and subversive. Simple because, duh, of course a writer needs to capture and memorialize inspiration when it strikes. And write even when it doesn’t. Subversive because it encourages women, specifically mamas, to spend time on themselves and their writing passion. A mama prioritizing her creativity should not be subversive. Mamas being as generous and nurturing to themselves as they are to everybody else should be the norm. After all, it is not like we are living in Gilead! Hm.